In the future, electronic exchanges will be a major facilitator of negotiation systems and a driver for new forms of bargaining and matchmaking between potential trading partners. Most existing bargaining systems are based on formalized auction schemes which need a centralized authority (an auctioneer). With the development of decentralized networks, we need new forms of electronic bargaining w...

In New South Wales, Australia, a cost-effectiveness evaluation was conducted of an adult drug court (ADC) program as an alternative to jail for criminal offenders addicted to illicit drugs. This article describes the program, the cost-effectiveness analysis, and the results. The results of this study reveal that, for the 23-month period of the evaluation, the ADC was as cost-effective as were c...

This analysis was carried out, first for Health Service properties in Northamptonshire, and then for schools and domestic properties. Comparison of the three programmes showed that the programme in schools was the most cost effective, but that a completed programme in domestic properties would be almost as effective. However, in the UK, only 10 % of those who discover raised radon levels have s...

The day is drawing near when each patient can be made into a SuperModel—not a fashion model, but a digital or virtual model (see companion paper Brown, in review). Such representation of a patient can also be termed a patient avatar (The Discipulus Project, 2013). Principles to help guide successful implementation of these SuperModels are addressed in this article, including efficiency and cost...

BACKGROUND Other than the UK, The Netherlands has no formal threshold for cost-per-QALY values defined yet. For example, a cutoff value at €20,000 per QALY is sometimes mentioned in various discussions, however it has no formal status at all. Yet, since 2005, all new innovative do have to go through a cost-effectiveness evaluation though, with the assessment being focused on the methodology rat...

BACKGROUND Although economic evaluation has been widely recognized as a key feature of both health services and educational research, for many years there has been a paucity of such studies relevant to services for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), making the application of economic arguments to the development of services difficult. AIMS The study has two aims, n...

During the past four decades, public trust in governments has continued to diminish due to various administrative, political, socio-cultural, economic, and mass media causes. Focusing on the administrative dimension, this study explores selected administrative factors to the declining of public trust, including public perception of administrative corruption (lack of transparency), inefficiency ...

This paper discusses the application of plant-wide control philosophy to enhance the performance and capacity of the Produced Water Treatment (PWT) in offshore oil & gas production processes. Different from most existing facilityor material-based PWT innovation methods, the objective of this work is to propose a software-based breakthrough PWT innovation solution. This is achieved through integ...

Voluntary eye hospitals committed to serving the community must understand the reality of cost escalation due to inflation, advancements in medical technology and changing expectations of staff and patients. However, these costs are often not matched by the patients’ paying capacity. While increasing income, through increased user fees or donations which are financial options that will be consi...