Capital equipment

Environmental pollution of the air, water, and soil comprise an increasingly urgent challenge to global health, well-being, and productivity. The impact of environmental pollution arguably has its greatest impact across the lifespan on children, women of childbearing age, and pregnant women and their unborn children, not only because of their vulnerability during development, but also because of their subsequent longevity. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, is a highly instructive, perhaps extreme, example of what happens with recent, rapid urbanization...

INTRODUCTION: Transfusion is a mechanism of transmission of Chagas' disease. There are no studies on the costs of the screening test in Colombian blood banks. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the costs of the screening test for Chagas' disease among blood donors in two Colombian blood banks, 2015. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a micro-costing study from the perspective of the health care provider to estimate the cost of Chagas' disease testing in two blood banks, Banco de Sangre de la Cruz Roja, Seccional Bolívar, and Banco de Sangre del Hospital de Yopal, Casanare, taking into account four cost categories: 1) Administrative costs: public services and insurance costs were calculated based on the blood bank area in square meters; 2) capital costs: building and equipment costs that were annualized using a 3% discount rate and a lifespan of 20 years for building and five for equipment; 3) costs of Chagas' disease test materials and reagents adjusted by blood bank production level, and 4) costs of staff in charge of Chagas' disease test processing...

BACKGROUND: Mongolia is a country characterized by its vast distances and extreme climate. An underdeveloped medical transport infrastructure makes patient transfer from outlying regions dangerous. Providing pediatric surgical care locally is crucial to improve the lives of children in the countryside. This is the first structured assessment of nationwide pediatric surgical capacity. METHODS: Operation rates were calculated using data from the Mongolian Center for Health Development and population data from the Mongolian Statistical Information Service...

OBJECTIVE: Although the WHO-developed Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) tool is a comprehensive and widely applied survey of health facility preparedness, SARA data have not previously been used to model predictors of readiness. We sought to demonstrate that SARA data can be used to model availability of essential medicines for treating non-communicable diseases (EM-NCD). METHODS: We fit a Poisson regression model using 2013 SARA data from 196 Ugandan health facilities...

Capacity planning is a crucial component of modern health care governance. The aim of this paper is to analyze the requirements that need to be met to build effective hospital capacity planning mechanisms in Poland. In this context, the recent regulatory changes strongly influencing hospital sector functioning, including introduction of health care needs maps, capital investment assessment, and hospital network regulations, are analyzed. Some possible ways forward, based on review of international experiences in hospital capacity planning, are discussed...

INTRODUCTION: Injury is the third leading cause of death in Mongolia, with a 29% increase in motor vehicle fatalities over the past decade. Half of the population lives outside the urbanized capital of Ulaanbaatar, where access to care is limited. This study evaluates and describes the Mongolian trauma system and makes recommendations for improvements. METHODS: Hospital-level data were collected, and an International Assessment of Capacity for Trauma (INTACT) score (0-10) was calculated...

Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is located on the Tibetan Plateau. Accelerated economic development and flourishing tourism resulting from the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) have increased solid waste generation and contamination in recent years. Using data from Lhasa Statistical Yearbooks and previous studies, this study estimates the future population of permanent residents and tourists using the least squares method to extrapolate the population from 2015-2025, and evaluates the effects of the QTR on municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Lhasa and estimates future MSW generation...

Background and Objectives: To draw from systematic and other literature reviews to identify, describe, and critique nonpharmacological practices to address behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSDs) and provide evidence-based recommendations for dementia care especially useful for potential adopters. Research Design and Methods: A search of systematic and other literature reviews published from January 2010 through January 2017. Nonpharmacological practices were summarized to describe the overall conceptual basis related to effectiveness, the practice itself, and the size and main conclusions of the evidence base...

Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) capitalizes on the optical absorption of blood hemoglobin to enable label-free high-contrast imaging of the cerebral microvasculature in vivo. Although time-resolved ultrasonic detection equips PAM with depth-sectioning capability, most of the data at depths are often obscured by acoustic reverberant artifacts from superficial cortical layers and thus unusable. In this paper, we present a first-of-a-kind dictionary learning algorithm to remove the reverberant signal while preserving underlying microvascular anatomy...

There are no published data on the cost of cancer treatment for guiding reimbursement decisions in India. The present study was designed to estimate the cost of treating head and neck cancer (HNC) with the aim of determining package rates. The present study was undertaken in the Departments of Radiotherapy and Otolaryngology of a large tertiary care hospital in North India. Economic health system costs incurred were assessed using a bottom-up methodology. Data on all resources-capital or recurrent, incurred on the delivery of HNC treatment were collected from April 2014 to March 2015...

Background: In developing nations like Nepal, spinal cord injury has multispectral consequences for both the patient and their family members. It has the tendency to cripple and handicap the patients, and burn out their caretakers, both physically and mentally. Furthermore, the centralization of health care with only a handful of dedicated rehabilitation centers throughout Nepal further places patients into disarray. This study was carried out as a pilot study to determine the modes of injury, age groups affected, clinical profiles and patterns of injury sustained, as well as the efficacy of managing a subset of patients, who have sustained cervical spine and cord injuries...

1. The effects of changes in technical efficiency on the increase of broiler production are presented for the period 1994-2013 based on the panel data from seven farms located in southern and central Poland. A total of 766 cycles were analysed. 2. The Cobb-Douglas production function was used to assess the changes of output elasticities as well as technical changes in broiler production, for 5-year sub-periods separately. 3. Technical indices of broiler production significantly improved between years 1994-2013: feed conversion ratio decreased from 2...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To investigate the application of a telemedicine intervention in diabetes foot ulcer care, and its implications for the healthcare professionals in the clinical field. BACKGROUND: Contextual factors are found to be important when applying technology in health care and applying telemedicine in home-based care has been identified as particularly complex. DESIGN AND METHODS: We conducted field observations and individual interviews among healthcare professionals in home-based care and specialist health care in a diabetes foot care telemedicine RCT (Clin...

Stereoselective manipulations at the C1 anomeric position of saccharides are one of the central goals of preparative carbohydrate chemistry. Historically, the majority of reactions forming a bond with anomeric carbon has focused on reactions of nucleophiles with saccharide donors equipped with a leaving group. Here, we describe a novel approach to stereoselective synthesis of C-aryl glycosides capitalizing on the highly stereospecific reaction of anomeric nucleophiles. First, methods for the preparation of anomeric stannanes have been developed and optimized to afford both anomers of common saccharides in high anomeric selectivities...

BACKGROUND: In 2014 California implemented a federal dual alignment demonstration used a capitated managed healthcare model called Cal MediConnect (CMC) to integrate medical care and long term services and supports (LTSS) for beneficiaries with both Medicare and Medicaid. These beneficiaries often have complex care needs, including multiple chronic conditions and disabilities. By 2016, 120,000 eligible beneficiaries were enrolled in the program. OBJECTIVES: Focus groups with enrolled beneficiaries were conducted to gather rich data about their early experiences with quality of care, access to care, and coordination of care in CMC plans and to identify recommendations for program improvement...

In a recent longitudinal surveillance study in 30 U.S. retail delicatessens, 9.7% of environmental surfaces were positive for Listeria monocytogenes, and we found substantial evidence of persistence. In this study, we aimed to reduce the prevalence and persistence of L. monocytogenes in the retail deli environment by developing and implementing practical and feasible intervention strategies (i.e., sanitation standard operating procedures; SSOPs). These SSOPs were standardized across the 30 delis enrolled in this study...

BACKGROUND: In order to achieve success in future goals and activities, health research centers are required to identify their key success factors. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to extract and rank the factors affecting the success of research centers at one of the medical universities in Iran. METHODS: This study is a mixed method (qualitative-quantitative) study, which was conducted between May to October in 2016. The study setting was 22 health research centers...

PURPOSE: To establish the effect on diagnostic confidence of a simulation setting, in which radiologists re-interpret anonymized pediatric MRI cases. MATERIALS: In this IRB-approved study, participants completed surveys rating confidence before and after interpreting 10 MRI cases for suspected appendicitis in children. RESULTS: 18 radiologists (4 faculty, 5 fellows, and 9 residents) correctly identified an average of 7.44 cases (range 5-9)...

Current clinical treatment regimens, including many emergent immune strategies (e.g., checkpoint inhibitors) have done little to affect the devastating course of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). Clinical trials for PDA often employ multi-modal treatment, and have started to incorporate stromal-targeted therapies, which have shown promising results in early reports. Focused ultrasound (FUS) is one such therapy that is uniquely equipped to address local and systemic limitations of conventional cancer therapies as well as emergent immune therapies for PDA...

Malaria is one of the leading causes of infectious disease in travelers returning from the tropics. The diagnosis of malaria is typically performed by examining Giemsa-stained thick and thin peripheral blood smears, which is time consuming, labor intensive, and requires high levels of proficiency. Alternatively, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a new molecular method, which is rapid, sensitive, and requires less capital equipment and technological training. We conducted a retrospective study comparing two formats of a commercial LAMP assay (Meridian illumigene malaria [M] and malaria Plus [MP]) versus reference microscopy on archived blood specimens (n = 140) obtained from unique returning travelers suspected of having malaria...