Many healthcare organization projects take more time and resources than planned and fail to deliver desired business outcomes. Healthcare IT is a major component of many projects and often undeservedly receives the blame for failure. Poor results are often not a result of faulty healthcare IT or poor project management ...

Integrity Consulting Partners (ICP) is an independent consulting firm, specialising in healthcare ICT support, with a range of major projects delivered for European public healthcare clients in the areas of systems specification and design, procurement and project management of system implementations. ICP has had a strategic relationship with the General ...

Triatoma dominicana sp.n. (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Triatominae) is described from a fifth instar nymph exuvia in Dominican amber and represents the first fossil representative of this subfamily. The new species is placed in the tribe Triatomini and tentatively in the genus Triatoma on the basis of the following characters; body length ...

The setting up of the Greek Stakeholders Group in the framework of the EC Food and Agriculture Restoration Management Involving Networked Groups (FARMING) project is described. The Group included members from more than 20 governmental and non-governmental organisations, having interest and/or responsibilities in the management of a crisis following a ...

This paper reports the implementation, findings and feedback of the audit project of the general practice (GP) module carried out in the fifth year of the MBChB (Sheffield) twinning programme with the Perak College of Medicine. After training, each student with his/her GP tutor planned and conducted the audit. All ...

A personal look at some of the developments in practical clinical informatics over the past two decades, with discussion of several successful projects, including the National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics, the Azyxxi system, Federal Project ER One, the Institutes for Innovation in Medicine, the Medical MediaLab, Project Sentinel, and ...

Kristianstads Vattenrike (The Rich Wetlands of Kristianstad/Water Kingdom) is a 35-km-long wetland area surrounded by cultivated landscape in the south of Sweden. The project area covers some more than 100,000 hectares and includes the lower catchment areas of River Helge å and the coastal areas of the bay Hanöbukten, a ...

Students in Reproductive Management (a senior-level course with approximately 20 to 50 students per semester) at the University of Missouri-Columbia are required to participate in a simulation exercise that is designed to improve reproductive efficiency in a beef herd. During a simulated 5-yr period, students must 1) improve reproductive efficiency ...

A mathematical simulation model was used to assist 5 farmers in developing design criteria for inclusion of robotic milking systems in each farm situation. The barn layout influences arrivals of cows to the milking robot as well as other cow traffic and must be carefully planned. Each farmer had individual ...

Resource managers require objective methodologies to optimize decisions related to forest road deactivation and other aspects of road management, especially in steep terrain, where road-related slope failures inflict extensive environmental damage. Decision analysis represents a systematic framework that clearly identifies real options and critical decision points. This framework links current ...

In 1997 agricultural workers, turned into looters, found an intact funerary site in the cloud forest in northeastern Peru. A prompt archaeological rescue project permitted the recovery of an important collection of mummies and artifacts that are providing important insights about the archaeology of the Chachapoya people that established in ...

Knowledge Management (KM) has made a significant impact on the global healthcare sector. However, it is important to address the link between knowledge, information and engineering. Knowledge Engineering (KE) is often only a small part of a KM-based project, yet some KM practitioners favour wholly KE-biased Knowledge Management projects, disregarding ...

Structured clinical encounter notes offer many advantages compared to free text notes. However, cost and other issues limit their widespread use. At our institution, the electronic medical record (EMR) used by an Internal Medicine practice was designed years ago to utilize structured data. This paper describes a technique to improve ...

No doubt, there is a marked civilization and modern establishment of housing, agricultural and industrial projects in Egypt. In a survey to evaluate the culicini mosquito larvae in Greater Cairo, five species were recovered. These were Culex pipiens, Cx. pusillus, Cx. perexiguus Culiseta longia reolata and Aedes caspius. The taxonomic ...

In 2001, the Federal Office of Pipeline Safety promulgated its pipeline integrity management rule for hazardous liquid pipelines. A notice of proposed rule making for a similar rule for gas pipelines was issued in January 2003. A final rule must be in place by the end of 2003. These rules ...

Six Sigma is a new management philosophy that seeks a nonexistent error rate. It is ripe for healthcare because many healthcare processes require a near-zero tolerance for mistakes. For most organizations, establishing a Six Sigma program requires significant resources and produces considerable stress. However, in healthcare, management can piggyback Six ...

A 10-year quality journey of a Swedish university hospital is described in this case study based on a variety of data sources. A series of quality initiatives were implemented according to total quality management (TQM) "best practice." Many projects were successful, but still a majority of those did not meet ...

The National Theatre Project was set up in March 2001 by the Modernisation Agency to improve the patient and carer experience, improve employee satisfaction, optimise theatre utilisation and reduce cancelled operations. This is the second article in the series where David Ainsworth, manager of a pilot site project in Derby, ...

DESIGN: Jemboss is a graphical user interface (GUI) for the European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite (EMBOSS). It is being developed at the MRC UK HGMP-RC as part of the EMBOSS project. This paper explains the technical aspects of the Jemboss client-server design. The client-server model optionally allows that a ...

In the past in Africa, state forest administration took nominal control of local forest management from rural populations. This control, based on a European concept of management, gradually deteriorated and the methods of classical forest management are no longer suited to existing conditions. This has led to a need for ...

Project management is a core competency for nurses and managers. In this article, the project life cycle and project planning and controlling tools are described. Managers can readily see that using project management can be done with minimal training and disruption to the organization. Clearly, the costs of adopting project ...

When it comes to improving business performance, managers have no shortage of tools and techniques to choose from. But what really works? What's critical, and what's optional? Two business professors and a former McKinsey consultant set out to answer those questions. In a ground-breaking, five-year study that involved more than ...

This review covers recent methods to create a manageable subset of drug targets for development by prioritizing novel genes from the Human Genome Project. The ability to organize genomic data into a distinct set of drug discovery assets can be viewed as a form of knowledge management. While bioinformatics systems ...

Under current conditions of accelerated socioenvironmental change in the Mediterranean forested landscapes, fire is one of the most critical and difficult risks to tackle within the region. This article summarizes the lessons learned from a project based on the participatory integration of qualitative local stakeholders' knowledge with expert GIS fire ...

The paper presents an overview of the present situation of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA). The analysis indicates an urgent need to radically improve the current water supply and wastewater management practices, to become sustainable. The MCMA is one of the most rapidly growing urban centers of the world, ...

The human genome project and the technological breakthroughs it has produced have moved the field of molecular medicine forward with breathtaking speed. This will impact not only the advance of scientific discoveries and the way science is conducted but also the clinical practice of medicine. In this review we explain ...

Introduction 1 Environmental Capability of Tropical Plantation Forestry 2 Soil and biophysical constraints 3 Response to management inputs 4 Genetic potential and interaction with the environment 4 Research Strategy 5 Objectives 5 Approcah and Rationale for Treatment Selection 5 Experimental Design and Methodology 6 Project Management 8 Expected Outcome 9 ...

As corporations struggle to gain better control and use of organizational resources in a rapidly changing business environment, they're finding that project management is an efficacious discipline for supporting strategic initiatives and achieving business goals. Successful project management requires an understanding of the business drivers, the organizational structure, the benefits ...

From its inception in 1989, the Visible Human Project was designed as an experiment in open source software. In 1994 and 1995 the male and female Visible Human data sets were released by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) as open source data sets. In 2002 the NLM released the ...

If clinical questions are to be used on a large scale as a practitioner interface to the medical knowledge base, improved methods must be developed for the semantic management of question corpora. In this project we investigate the use of description logic to manage question corpora. We propose the addition ...

PROBLEM: Bamboo scaffolding has been widely used in South China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia for many years. Bamboo scaffolding is more economical, but its safety record is relatively poor. Conversely, metal scaffolding is more expensive, but its use in these regions has increased in recent years because it is ...

This paper discusses the role of benchmarking as a component of quality management. It describes the historical background of benchmarking, its competitive origin and the requirement in today's health environment for a more collaborative approach. The classical 'functional and generic' types of benchmarking are discussed with a suggestion to adopt ...

Biosphere greenhouse gas (GHG) management consists of preserving and enhancing terrestrial carbon pools and producing biomass as a fossil fuel substitute. The discussion of this topic has focused primarily on carbon-accounting and project-level issues, particularly relating to carbon sequestration as a source of emissions credits under the Kyoto Protocol. While ...

Senior managers often feel frustration--even exasperation--toward information technology and their IT departments. The managers complain that they don't see much business value from the high-priced systems they install, but they don't understand the technology well enough to manage it in detail. So they often leave IT people to make, by ...

The assessment of the performance of doctors in practice is becoming more widely accepted. While there are many potential purposes for such assessments, sometimes the consequences of the assessments will be 'high stakes'. In these circumstances, any of the many elements of the assessment programme may potentially be challenged. These ...

Case management programs are a common approach to managing the quality and cost of services in managed care organizations. Once developed these programs may grow stagnate as the managed care member population grows and changes. This article presents a redesign project initiated by a managed care organization located in a ...

Tomboys are girls who behave like boys and, as such, challenge some theories of sex-typing. We recruited tomboys (N = 60) ages 4-9 through the media and compared them with their sisters (N = 15) and brothers (N = 20) on measures of playmate preference, sex-typed activities and interests, and ...

California and other regions in the United States are becoming more populated and ethnically diverse, and thus, ecological impacts on the wildland-urban interface are a significant policy concern. In a socioeconomic assessment focused on the geographic regions surrounding four national forests in southern California, population projections are being formulated to ...

As the Human Genome Project nears completion, anticipation and speculation about its effects on the practice of medicine have increased. This chapter explores the various ramifications of the Human Genome Project on the practice of adolescent medicine in particular. The potential uses of genetic discoveries for diagnosis, prediction, and perhaps ...

Declines in salmon stocks and general watershed health in Washington State, USA, have led to an increase in stream restoration and enhancement projects initiated throughout the state. The increasing number of projects has also raised questions regarding the monitoring of these efforts. Project managers receiving hydraulic project approvals (HPAs) were ...

Most organizations promote employees into managerial positions based on their technical competence. But very often, that kind of competence does not translate into good managerial performance. Many rookie managers fail to grasp how their roles have changed: that their jobs are no longer about personal achievement but about enabling others ...

After assessing the efficiency of the medical/surgical practice, the physician should work on implementing goals with the practice manager or administrator. To assist in the implementation of these goals, the physician should be involved in strategic planning. By taking each project one step at a time, and through better communication ...

The thesis 'One Forest, Many Locals: different ways of managing natural resources in Tanzania' is an analysis of how the actors involved in a specific development project have different perceptions of forest. Hence how these varying perceptions can affect the outcome of a development project. The theoretical base for this ...

The Mid North Rivers Management Planning Project (MNRMPP) of the Environment Protection Agency, Department for Environment and Heritage began as a response to community concerns regarding watercourse related issues in the Mid North of South Australia. In response to these concerns the MNRMPP project team developed rapid, cost effective methods ...

In view of a European Innovation Project (DG XIII) on the application of the Urban Pollution Management (UPM) procedure, a European consortium was set up to carry out pilot studies in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. On the Belgian pilot catchment of Tielt the impact from sewer system and ...

The phylogenetic relationships of the late Eocene anthropoids Catopithecus browni and Proteopithecus sylviae are currently a matter of debate, with opinion divided as to whether these taxa are stem or crown anthropoids. The phylogenetic position of Catopithecus is of particular interest, for, unlike the highly generalized genus Proteopithecus, this taxon ...

This article examines the objective and subjective aspects of managerial careers in six large firms that have experienced organizational restructuring. We begin by assessing the dominant models of change in career structures, particularly those which emphasize the 'portfolio' route to career success. Although elements of the bureaucratic career remain, we ...

The authors report on a self-completed questionnaire study from a North Yorkshire based general practice regarding the information needs of its clinicians. The work was carried out with a particular focus on the practice library, and the findings identified that a new approach to maintaining and developing the library was ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of fundholding on cost containment and after termination of the project. DESIGN AND SETTING: Primary care practices participating in the project were allocated an itemized budget. Practices assumed authority for hospitalization, drugs, ambulatory medical diagnostic, consultant services and acquisition of minor equipment. Financial incentives were ...

A pilot electronic booking project for outpatient appointments at King's College Hospital, London, has been well received by consultants. But only a minority of practices are taking part--only 24 of the 160 local practices are participating. A considerable culture change is needed to persuade practices to become involved. GPs accustomed ...