SIGNIFICANCE, MIDTERM RESULTS AND EXPERIENCES OF THE BUDAPEST ONCOLOGY CT AND MR WAITING LISTS REDUCTION PROGRAM

BACKGROUND – High-value medical imaging diagnostic procedures are key elements of the diagnostic process of patients with suspected oncological disease and in determining the effectiveness of the initiated therapy. In Hungary, due to the high diagnostic demands, diagnostic waiting lists for computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MR) are usually long and result in less transparent reporting times, even in the case of individuals who are potentially suspected of having a malignant disease, or in the case of the follow-up of effectiveness of treatment of diagnosed cancer patients. THE AIM OF THE PRESENT STUDY – Midterm analysis of the onco-diagnostic Program in Budapest implemented within the framework of the Healthy Budapest Program (HBP), gain experiences and presentation of underlying health policy processes. RESULTS – From November 2020 till 31st of December 2022 within the framework of the Program, the Municipality of Budapest has reimbursed 5437 contrast-enhanced CT and 2948 MR examinations with "C” or "D” disease diagnosis. Examinations has been financed in a sector-neutral manner to public and private healthcare providers in the so-called ‘BP' reimbursement category. The report undertaken by Semmelweis University has found, that in Budapest Municipality funded patients, radiological examinations were performed on average 15.2 days sooner (16.1 vs. 31.1 days), than in the case of the National Health Insurance Fund funded patients, the mean waiting time for CT/MR examination was shortened by 13.0 days (4.2 vs. 17.2 days, respectively). In 86% of cases, patients used the Program once, in 14% twice or more. Utilization of the Program shows a significant difference by the different districts of the Capital: the number of cases – originally planned based on demographic, prevalence and incidence data, broken down by district – was utilized between 3-45% for CT, and 8-37% for MR cases, respectively, by district residents mainly referred by district outpatient clinic specialists, between the period of November 2020 and August 2022. CONCLUSION – The Program has been utilised in a smaller scale, than it was originally planned before COVID, in terms of its cases. The program has achieved its aim through the reduction of CT and MR diagnostic waiting times and waiting lists, and it has an indirect effect in generally reducing waiting times at medical imaging. However, this is not sufficient to speed up and provide more efficient service for the entire oncology diagnostic process. Therefore, we wish to further develop the Program in the direction of adding additional diagnostic examinations and developing a patient pathway management module. © 2023 Literatura Medica Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Sense of Place Attitudes on Quality of Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Iranian Residents in Hungary

Limited research has investigated the impact of immigrants' sense of place (SOP) attitudes on their quality of life (QOL) outcomes, especially during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study aimed to fill this gap by examining the effect of SOP attitudes and health-related QOL (HQOL) on 120 Iranian citizens residing in Budapest, Hungary, during the pandemic. Using social media platforms, an online survey was conducted between March and July 2020. The findings of this study revealed that SOP elements, such as connection to sites, location identification, and location reliance, are susceptible to change and rely on QOL during the pandemic. The study also highlighted that Budapest has the potential to become a desirable destination for future immigrants. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on the relationship between SOP attitudes and QOL outcomes among immigrants during a crisis. It provides valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners to improve the SOP and QOL of immigrants living in cities affected by pandemics or other crises. This study provides insights into the influence of a sense of place on the quality of life of Iranian immigrants by presenting a model and highlighting significant results in a selected community.

SIGNIFICANCE, MIDTERM RESULTS AND EXPERIENCES OF THE BUDAPEST ONCOLOGY CT AND MR WAITING LISTS REDUCTION PROGRAM

BACKGROUND – High-value medical imaging diagnostic procedures are key elements of the diagnostic process of patients with suspected oncological disease and in determining the effectiveness of the initiated therapy. In Hungary, due to the high diagnostic demands, diagnostic waiting lists for computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MR) are usually long and result in less transparent reporting times, even in the case of individuals who are potentially suspected of having a malignant disease, or in the case of the follow-up of effectiveness of treatment of diagnosed cancer patients. THE AIM OF THE PRESENT STUDY – Midterm analysis of the onco-diagnostic Program in Budapest implemented within the framework of the Healthy Budapest Program (HBP), gain experiences and presentation of underlying health policy processes. RESULTS – From November 2020 till 31st of December 2022 within the framework of the Program, the Municipality of Budapest has reimbursed 5437 contrast-enhanced CT and 2948 MR examinations with "C” or "D” disease diagnosis. Examinations has been financed in a sector-neutral manner to public and private healthcare providers in the so-called ‘BP' reimbursement category. The report undertaken by Semmelweis University has found, that in Budapest Municipality funded patients, radiological examinations were performed on average 15.2 days sooner (16.1 vs. 31.1 days), than in the case of the National Health Insurance Fund funded patients, the mean waiting time for CT/MR examination was shortened by 13.0 days (4.2 vs. 17.2 days, respectively). In 86% of cases, patients used the Program once, in 14% twice or more. Utilization of the Program shows a significant difference by the different districts of the Capital: the number of cases – originally planned based on demographic, prevalence and incidence data, broken down by district – was utilized between 3-45% for CT, and 8-37% for MR cases, respectively, by district residents mainly referred by district outpatient clinic specialists, between the period of November 2020 and August 2022. CONCLUSION – The Program has been utilised in a smaller scale, than it was originally planned before COVID, in terms of its cases. The program has achieved its aim through the reduction of CT and MR diagnostic waiting times and waiting lists, and it has an indirect effect in generally reducing waiting times at medical imaging. However, this is not sufficient to speed up and provide more efficient service for the entire oncology diagnostic process. Therefore, we wish to further develop the Program in the direction of adding additional diagnostic examinations and developing a patient pathway management module. © 2023 Literatura Medica Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Digital Transformation during COVID-19 and Its Impact on Transportation and Mobility

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected mobility and caused a significant impact on the transportation sector. The research aims to assess the effects of the pandemic by conducting a survey questionnaire in two capitals Budapest - Hungary and Amman - Jordan. The study will assess the impact of the digital transformation on work, learning, and services as well as the degree of passenger satisfaction with public transportation (PT) and how participants evaluate the digital transformation associated with the pandemic. The data was analyzed using AMOS with SPSS software v.26, the Structural Equation Models SEM test and emphasis the hypotheses, it has been found that the impact of the pandemic on mobility exceeds the traditional limits and applicable restrictions. Such studies can benefit risk management researchers, decision-makers, and planners. © 2022 IEEE.

Euro 2020 Held during the COVID-19 Period: Budapest Residents’ Perceptions

Organising the 2020 European Football Championship was fraught with the uncertainties of the pandemic period. Budapest hosted its four allocated matches during the postponed event without stadium capacity restrictions. Drawing on both social exchange theory (SET) and social representation theory (SRT), the study aimed to investigate how the level of fear of COVID-19 before the start of Euro 2020 influenced the perception of the tournament among residents of Budapest. Data were collected by telephone interview during the five days preceding the event based on a representative sample of Budapest residents (n = 1003, adult population aged 18 years and over), accounting for gender, age and place of residence. Cluster analysis identified three groups of residents based on fear of coronavirus: concerned, neutral and unconcerned. Although our study only investigated the opinions of residents in one host city, the relevance of the research appears compelling in that it highlights the crucial role of COVID-19 in influencing responses to the expected impact of Euro 2020. Examining the views of local residents and understanding the factors that influence their opinions play a key role in more successful and sustainable delivery of sporting events. © 2022 by the authors.

Long Term Time Series Prediction of Bike Sharing Trips: A Cast Study of Budapest City

Bike-sharing services provide easy access to environmentally-friendly mobility reducing congestion in urban areas. Increasing demand requires more service planning based on the behavior of bike-sharing users. The Time Series models Seasonal Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average, Artificial Neural Network, and Exponential Smoothing have been investigated to reveal bike-sharing use for five years. Results show that weekends are attracting more trips. Summer is the most season influencing more demand. The model is predicted within a seasonal trend with a three-day lag. Compared to the Exponential Smoothing Model, SARIMA and ANN provide better predictions. Similarities are obtained in the periods of COVID-19 and after that, in the lags and highest days having bike-sharing trips. This study helps decision-makers in forecasting bike-sharing trips. © 2022 IEEE.

Branding Built Heritage through Cultural Urban Festivals: An Instagram Analysis Related to Sustainable Co-Creation, in Budapest

Global tourism is posing challenges on the environmental and social sustainability of host communities, while the industry itself has proven to be vulnerable to threats such as a global pandemic. Proximity tourism was demonstrated to be a more sustainable form in every aspect, especially when locals can co-create the experience and develop place attachment in urban environments through placemaking practices valuing previously underused urban heritage. An alternative urban festival in Budapest focusing on the built environment attracts locals annually to visit open houses providing visitors with genuine experiences. Residents are actively involved in the cultural placemaking practices of the event. As visitors documented the festival and the architectural heritage and uploaded hundreds of photos of their experience to social media platforms such as Instagram, they contributed to the branding process of the event and to the placemaking process involving less known heritage values. In this study, a dataset of more than ten thousand posts was retrieved by scraping Instagram posts based on hashtags related to the Budapest100 festival and analyzed from a temporal and spatial aspect. Returning visitors were identified, who contribute substantially to the sustainability of the event and to the branding of the built environment. Results suggest that community-based local urban festivals are a sustainable form of proximity tourism, resilient even to the COVID-19 pandemic. Place branding through urban festivals focusing on the local built heritage can also decrease the growing pressure on city centers in tourist-historic cities dealing with overtourism. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Addressing the Phenomenon of Overtourism in Budapest from Multiple Angles Using Unconventional Methodologies and Data

This paper addresses the phenomenon of overtourism in Budapest from multiple perspectives, starting with an overview that uses information collected from news, media, and academic tourism literature. Further, the phenomenon of overtourism is addressed quantitatively using different indicators, including tourism density and intensity. According to these indicators, the center of Budapest (formed by districts I, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX) has been strongly affected by the presence of tourists, while districts physically far from the center have been less affected. This fact suggests the heterogeneity of the city in terms of overtourism. The number one catalyst of the negative impacts of foreign visitors’ behavior is party tourism (‘ruin pub’ tourism), which involves an unconventional use of the Hungarian capital. Finally, using an unconventional optimization method called fuzzy linear programming, we attempt to explore the challenging problem of identifying the optimal number of tourists for the city. The results of the study have important theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. On the theoretical side, we offer a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of overtourism in Budapest. Methodologically, the integrated approach in terms of data gathering and unconventional analytical methodologies (comprised of a case study analysis, the assessment of effective indicators for measuring the discussed phenomenon, and the demonstration of the sustainable number of visitors) represents a novel perspective about the extent of overtourism in Budapest. On the practical side, our findings provide valuable guidance for policymakers to help mitigate the problem of overtourism in the city. With regard to future research, we suggest extending and updating the results presented in this study to develop more sustainable tourism strategies.

Participation, trust, and risks associated with peer-to-peer accommodation platforms: How did the COVID-19 crisis affect Airbnb Budapest in 2020?

Our research was aimed at exploring the different layers of trust with regard to Airbnb services, as well as the practices of discrimination on the platform. The fieldwork was carried out in the first half of 2020, partly before and partly after the COVID-19 related interventions, which significantly affected life in Budapest from mid-March 2020 onwards. A total of 21 semi-structured interviews were carried out, supplemented with online discourse analysis. Our empirical analysis revealed that most of our interviewees displayed positive attitudes towards Airbnb, but our online discourse analysis showed that there are rather mixed attitudes towards the company. Considering the platform from an employment perspective, certain elements of precarious working conditions were identified. When it comes to different layers of trust, we point out that interper- sonal trust between guests and hosts is crucial, resulting in positive experiences for hosts in many ways. We found social trust in Airbnb to be more ambiguous, as some interviewees claimed to have concerns with regard to its effect on the hous- ing market. Finally, distributed trust on the platform seemed significant, as ratings often serve as a means of predicting guests' trustworthiness. Most of the hosts we interviewed were aware of the fact that discrimination is not tolerated at all by the platform, so it is not surprising that we could hardly iden- tify any cases of overt discrimination;however, latent forms of discrimination and negative attitudes as well as stereotypes that were formed by the hosts in relation to numerous nationalities and minorities were explored in our empirical research.