BACKGROUND The recent proliferation of health care report cards, especially in cardiac care, has occurred in the absence of an ethical framework to guide in their development and implementation. An ethical framework is a consistent and comprehensive theoretical foundation in ethics, and is formed by integrating ethical theories, relevant literature, and other critical information (such as the v...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate stakeholders' understanding and opinions of the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm); to identify factors affecting funding levels; and to explore the future use of IFFIm. METHODS Between July and September 2015, we interviewed 33 individuals from 25 organizations identified as stakeholders in IFFIm. In total 22.5 hours of semi-structured interviews we...

BACKGROUND As many countries face primary care medical workforce shortages and find it difficult to provide timely and affordable care they seek to find new ways of delivering first point of contact health care through developing new service models. In common with other areas of rural and regional Australia, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) is currently experiencing a general practitioner...

Modeling of systems and their context is done to support communication with stakeholders, to facilitate reasoning about system requirements and design, to support decision making, and in general to create and maintain understanding, insight, and overview. One of the challenges in modeling is to find appropriate representations that are understandable for relevant stakeholders and that contain s...

The development of veracious models of the Internet topology has received a lot of attention in the last few years. Many proposed models are based on topologies derived from RouteViews [1] BGP table dumps (BTDs). However, BTDs do not capture all AS–links of the Internet topology and most importantly the number of the hidden AS–links is unknown, resulting in AS–graphs of questionable quality. As...

Ag nanowire-grid polarizers (NWGPs) were prepared by a one-step fabrication method, called liquid-bridge-mediated nanotransfer molding (LB-nTM). LB-nTM is a new direct nano-patterning method based on the direct transfer of various materials from a mold to a substrate via liquid layer. We fabricated NWGPs with Ag nanowire arrays (81 nm parallel lines and 119 nm spaces) on 2.5 in. transparent sub...

OBJECTIVES Although improvement initiatives show benefits to patient care, they often fail to sustain. Models and frameworks exist to address this challenge, but issues with design, clarity and usability have been barriers to use in healthcare settings. This work aimed to collaborate with stakeholders to develop a sustainability tool relevant to people in healthcare settings and practical for u...

OBJECTIVES Risk-sharing is being considered by many health care systems to address the financial risk associated with the adoption of new technologies. We explored major stakeholders' views toward the potential implementation of a financial risk-sharing mechanism regarding budget-impact estimates for adding new technologies to the Israeli National List of Health Services. According to our propo...

BACKGROUND Setting research priorities for improving nutrition in Africa is currently ad hoc and there is a need to shift the status quo in the light of slow progress in reducing malnutrition. This study explored African stakeholders' views on research priorities in the context of environmental and socio-demographic changes that will impact on nutritional status in Africa in the coming years. ...