Driven by cost and quality issues, the health system in the developed countries will undergo a fundamental change in this decade, from a physician-operated and hospital centred health system to consumer operated personal prevention, early risk detection and wellness system. This paper sketches the vision of a ‘Personal Health Assistant’ PHA, opening up new vistas in patient centred healthcare. ...

Autophagy is a ubiquitous catabolic process that causes cellular bulk degradation of cytoplasmic components and is generally associated with positive effects on health and longevity. Inactivation of autophagy has been linked with detrimental effects on cells and organisms. The antagonistic pleiotropy theory postulates that some fitness-promoting genes during youth are harmful during aging. On t...

BACKGROUND Fiscal Decentralization (FD) in many cases is encouraged as a strong means of improving the efficiency and equity in the provision of public goods, such as healthcare services. This issue has urged the researchers to experimentally examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization indicators and health outcomes. In this study we examine the effect of Fiscal Decentralization in...

This paper has two parts. The first part examines the regional health expenditure inequality in China by testing two hypotheses on health expenditure convergence. Cross-section regressions and cluster analysis are used to study the health expenditure convergence and to identify convergence clusters. We find no single nationwide convergence, only convergence by cluster. In the second part of the...

This review focuses on the factors that determine the molecular weight of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), an aliphatic polyester synthesized by bacteria for carbon and energy storage. PHA is a polymer with good thermoplastic, biodegradable, biocompatible and renewable properties. Therefore, it has attracted considerable attention as an environmentally friendly and biomedical material. Because the m...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) envisage a potential biomaterial alternative to replacing synthetic polymers for their biodegradability and biocompatibility. Modification approaches exploit the attributes adjust intrinsic hydrophobic properties, such as blending produce new polymer mix with novel properties. Functionalization of PHA, especially chemical grafting, perform introduce additional compou...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine the health expenses incurred by families with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those expenses' relation to total household income and expenditures. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, health care expenditure data were collected through face-to-face interviews. Expenses included annual costs for clinic visits, medication, beh...

We present the findings of a cognitive walkthrough inspection on three Personal Health Applications (PHAs). Two of the PHAs, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, are general purpose PHAs that are freely available to the general public. The last PHA, Colorado Care Tablet, is a prototype PHA that was designed specifically for older adults to manage their medication information. Older adults n...

Do autonomous health units fulfil their mandate better than ones that are integrated into municipal structures? Many observers of Ontario's public health system seem to think so, but this assumption is based on very little evidence. This paper seeks to help fill this gap by grounding a comparison of the spending growth of two health units with different governing structures in the multilevel go...