This is a brief commentary on how measures of computer and communication system quality have evolved over the past 50 years. We take “quality” to be a generic term having various interpretations, the evolution of such being the central theme of the remarks that follow. The systems in question range from hardware and software components to global networks such as the Internet. We restrict our at...

The correct grasp of objects is a key aspect for the right fulfillment of a given task. In robotics, the development of grippers more and more complex and versatile, such as mechanical hands, augments the necessity for algorithms to automatically determine grasps, and in a parallel way, arises the need to quantify the quality of the generated grasps in order to optimize them. This work reviews ...

BACKGROUND Physician-rating websites have become a popular tool to create more transparency about the quality of health care providers. So far, it remains unknown whether online-based rating websites have the potential to contribute to a better standard of care. OBJECTIVE Our goal was to examine which health care providers use online rating websites and for what purposes, and whether health c...

As consumers, payers, and regulatory agencies require evidence regarding health care qualities the demand for process of care measures will grow. Although outcome measures of quality represent the desired end results of health care, validated process of care measures provide an important additional element to quality improvement efforts, as they illuminate exactly which provider actions could b...

This article assesses whether there are methodological problems with child outcome measures that may contribute to the small associations between child care quality and child outcomes found in the literature. Outcome measures used in 65 studies of child care quality published between 1979 and December 2005 were examined, taking the previous review by Vandell and Wolfe (2000) as the starting poi...

Aiming towards the development of a general clustering theory, addressing issues that are common to the different clustering paradigms, we wish to initiate a systematic study of measures for the quality of a given data clustering. A clustering quality measure is a function that, given a data set and its partition into clusters, returns a non-negative real number representing the quality of that...

Hospital engagement networks (HENs) are part of the largest health care improvement initiative ever undertaken. This article explores whether engagement in improvement activities within a HEN affected quality measures. Data were drawn from 1174 acute care hospitals. A composite quality score was created from 10 targeted topic area measures multiplied by the number of qualifying topics. Scores i...

BACKGROUND In 2001, the World Health Organization developed the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) framework in an effort to attend to the multidimensional health-related concerns of individuals. Historically, although the ICF has frequently been used in a rehabilitation-based context, the World Health Organization has positioned it as a universal framewor...