ABSTRACT
This study presented work considering the development and initial assessment of an augmented reality approach to provide a user interface for operators that could be a part of an equipment maintenance and diagnostics system. Its purpose was to provide an equipment system for graduate students of engineering and technology to experiment with the design of augmented reality technology. The proposed system took place three hours per week over a period of four weeks of corrective actions that were triggered in the Department of Industrial Education and Technology at the National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan. The students adopted augmented reality technology to achieve big data acquisition and analysis for pre-diagnostic and maintenance applications. Preliminary assessment of the proposed system was encouraging and showed that it achieved success in helping students understand concepts and using augmented reality technology for equipment maintenance and diagnostics. The study provided important initial insights into its impact on student learning.
ABSTRACT
Radiation therapy has an increasing role in the management of patients with metastatic cancer. The integration of ablative versus palliative techniques with surgical and systemic approaches is complex, and inefficient care delivery can lead to prolonged hospitalizations that are inconsistent with palliative goals. A dedicated Inpatient Radiation Oncology Consult (IROC) service was created to provide rapid access to palliative radiotherapy. We previously reported the short-term impact of the IROC service in reducing hospital length of stay (LOS), and here we provide an update on long-term improvements in patient care, focusing on quality-of-care metrics including hospital LOS, use of hypofractionated approaches, and prognosis-appropriate care. We retrospectively compared inpatient radiation oncology consults placed in the 12 months preceding IROC (N = 1,507) to those placed during a 12-month period after IROC implementation (N = 1,509). The dates for calendar-matched cohorts were selected to minimize potential confounding from practice changes related to the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed continuous variables using the Mann-Whitney test and categorical variables using the Fisher's exact test. The IROC service was associated with reduced hospital length of stay for all consults (mean difference 1.0 day, P = 0.045). IROC led to shorter inpatient radiotherapy courses (mean 5.8 vs. 5.0 days, P = 0.007, and this reduction was greatest for patients discharged to hospice (mean 5.2 vs. 3.7 days, P = 0.033). Compared to pre-IROC patients, IROC patients were more likely to receive hypofractionated treatment (≤ 5 fractions;pre-IROC, N = 405/551 (74%) vs. IROC, N = 433/528 (82%), P = 0.001). Notably, the trend toward fewer prescribed fractions was not due to increased uptake of inpatient stereotactic regimens (N = 84/551 (15%) vs. N = 87/528 (16%), pre-IROC vs. IROC, respectively, P = 0.560). Death within 60 days of inpatient radiation therapy decreased under IROC (pre-IROC, N = 227/551 (41%) vs. IROC, N = 184/528 (35%), P = 0.033). A dedicated inpatient radiation oncology consult (IROC) service was associated with long-term reductions in hospital length of stay. Prognosis-appropriate care was improved through shorter treatment courses and decreased delivery of radiation to patients discharged to hospice or with limited survival. Our findings demonstrate the value of a dedicated program addressing the appropriate delivery of radiotherapy to hospitalized patients and highlight opportunities to stratify patients appropriate for ablative versus palliative treatments. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics is the property of Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science 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 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 . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Purpose - It is quite possible that financial institutions including life insurance companies would encounter turbulent situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic before policies mature. Constructing models that can generate scenarios for major assets to cover abrupt changes in financial markets is thus essential for the financial institution's risk management. Design/methodology/approach - The key issues in such modeling include how to manage the large number of risk factors involved, how to model the dynamics of chosen or derived factors and how to incorporate relations among these factors. The authors propose the orthogonal ARMA-GARCH (autoregressive movingaverage-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity) approach to tackle these issues. The constructed economic scenario generation (ESG) models pass the backtests covering the period from the beginning of 2018 to the end of May 2020, which includes the turbulent situations caused by COVID-19. Findings - The backtesting covering the turbulent period of COVID-19, along with fan charts and comparisons on simulated and historical statistics, validates our approach. Originality/value - This paper is the first one that attempts to generate complex long-term economic scenarios for a large-scale portfolio from its large dimensional covariance matrix estimated by the orthogonal ARMA-GARCH model.