Abstracts Empowering the Impoverished and Reducing Healthcare Costss Empowering the Impoverished and Reducing Healthcare Costs Kimberlie J. Warren, PhD, MPA Background: Socioeconomic disadvantage is a major risk factor for poor health and a consistent contributor to chronic stress, both of which are disempowering to individuals and communities. Poverty has been linked to a higher prevalence of ...

The potential benefits of optimal service scheduling for cleaning heat exchangers based on minimizing operating costs are explored. A demonstration is performed on a simulated 20 ton air-to-air vapor compression air conditioner. The costs of regular service schedules (indicative of current practice), minimal schedules needed to maintain comfort, and the optimal schedules are compared. Generally...

Comparison is a frequent task when analyzing data. In visualization, comparison tasks are naturally carried out based on a visual representation of the data. Visual comparison allows us to gain insight where plain computations of numerical differences alone cannot grasp the complex interdependencies in the data. Yet, visual comparison also comes at a cost. There are costs when interpreting the ...

After much anticipation, approval of the first U.S. biosimilar medications may be around the corner. Biosimilars hold the promise of reducing healthcare spending by offering lower-cost alternatives to highpriced biologic drugs. Biosimilars are not generic versions of existing biologics, however. Generic medications contain an active ingredient identical to that in the reference (‘‘brandname’’) ...

Advances in medical screening will result in more patients being screened for more conditions over a greater span of their lives. Screening programs must be implemented carefully if they are to be effective and if potentially adverse psychological consequences are to be avoided. Anxiety in patients participating in screening programs can be avoided or reduced by careful attention to patient n...

The problem of decreasing truck transportation costs for Mexican firms is of great interest and a challenge due to the currently deficient supply structure. This work deals with the case of leading Mexican tobacco manufacturer that requires a reduction of its outbound transportation cost under a declining market scenario. The approach applied to achieve the objective includes the elimination of...

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This paper describes a mechanism for reducing the cost of waiting for messages in architectures that allow user-level communication libraries. We reduce waiting costs in two ways: by reducing the cost of servicing interrupts, and by carefully controlling when the system uses interrupts and when it uses polling. We have implemented our mechanism on the SHRIMP multicomputer and integrated it with...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the cost-savings that could be realized by switching patients from two separate agents, ACE inhibitor/ARB and thiazide diuretic, to a fixed dose combination product. METHODS CompuScript and Longitudinal Rx (LRx) Insights data from IMS Health Canada for Oct 2006-Sept 2007 was used. From the LRx data, the proportion of patients taking both ACE inhibitors/ARBs and thiazide ...

We focus on an approach to reducing costs of running applications. MIPS, which is a traditional acronym for millions of instructions per second, have evolved to become a measurement of processing power and the CPU resource consumption. The need for controlling MIPS attributed costs is indispensable given the high percentage they involve in the operational IT costs. In this paper we investigate ...