Impact of integrated health care on elderly population: A systematic review of Taiwan's experience.

BACKGROUND: Care fragmentation in the elderly population prompted the need for integrated health care systems. However, evidence regarding the impact of the integrated care system in Taiwan is unclear. We aimed to conduct a systematic review to evaluate the impact of Taiwan's integrated health care programs on geriatric population. METHODS: We searched bibliographic databases MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and Airiti Library for relevant publications throughout May 2022. Studies investigating the effectiveness of Taiwan's integrated care programs were included. We used the critical appraisal skills programme (CASP) checklist, to assess the risk of bias of included studies. RESULTS: Thirty-four studies, with a total of 838,026 study subjects, were assessed. The systematic review on 11 subthemes (diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, hepatitis C virus, fractures, cancer, dementia, atrial fibrillation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mechanical ventilation, terminal illness, outpatients and community-dwelling patients), demonstrated that the implementation of integrated health care could not only provide benefits on survival, self-care ability, health quality, physical, and functional rehabilitation outcomes, but also significantly reduce medical utilization and expenditures. CONCLUSION: The integrated health care system for multiple morbidities benefits the Taiwanese geriatric population in physical and functional outcomes. The thematic synthesis provides references for future rigorous clinical trials.

Drive high power UVC-LED wafer into low-cost 4-inch era: effect of strain modulation (preprint)

Ultraviolet-C light-emitting diodes (UVC-LEDs) have great application in pathogen inactivation under various kinds of situations, especially in the fight against the COVID-19. Unfortunately, its epitaxial wafers are so far limited to 2-inch size, which greatly increases the cost of massive production. In this work, we report the 4-inch crack-free high-power UVC-LED wafer. This achievement relies on a proposed strain-tailored strategy, where a three-dimensional to two-dimensional (3D-2D) transition layer is introduced during the homo-epitaxy of AlN on high temperature annealed (HTA)-AlN template, which successfully drives the original compressive strain into tensile one and thus solves the challenge of realizing high quality Al$_{0.6}$Ga$_{0.4}$N layer with a flat surface. This smooth Al$_{0.6}$Ga$_{0.4}$N layer is nearly pseudomorphically grown on the strain-tailored HTA-AlN template, leading to 4-inch UVC-LED wafers with outstanding performances. Our strategy succeeds in compromising the bottlenecked contradictory in producing large-sized UVC-LED wafer on pronounced crystalline AlN template: The compressive strain in HTA-AlN allows for crack-free 4-inch wafer, but at the same time leads to a deterioration of the AlGaN morphology and crystal quality. The launch of 4-inch wafers makes the chip fabrication process of UVC-LEDs matches the mature blue one, and will definitely speed up the universal of UVC-LED in daily life.

Video conferencing software selection based on hybrid MCDM and cumulative prospect theory under a major epidemic

The video conferencing software is regarded as a significant tool for social distancing and getting incorporations up and going. Due to the indeterminacy of epidemic evolution and the multiple criteria, this paper proposes a video conferencing software selection method based on hybrid multi-criteria decision making (HMCDM) under risk and cumulative prospect theory (CPT), in which the criteria values are expressed in various mathematical forms (e.g., real numbers, interval numbers, and linguistic terms) and can be changed with natural states of the epidemic. Initially, the detailed description of video conferencing software selection problem under an epidemic are given. Subsequently, a whole procedure for video conferencing software selection is conducted, the approaches for processing and normalizing the multi-format evaluation values are presented. Furthermore, the expectations provided by DMs under different natural states of the epidemic are considered as the corresponding reference points (RP). Based on this, the matrix of gains and losses is constructed. Then, the prospect values of all criteria and the perceived probabilities of natural states are calculated according to the value function and the weighting function in CPT respectively. Finally, the proposed method is illustrated by an empirical case study, and the comparison analysis and the sensitivity analysis for the loss aversion parameter are conducted to prove the effectiveness and robustness. The results show that considering the psychological characteristics of DMs in selection decision is beneficial to avoid the unacceptable and potential loss risks. This study could provide a useful guideline for managers who intend to select appropriate video conferencing software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems is the property of IOS Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)