ABSTRACT
Financial sustainability is not a driving force of HealthGrids today, as a previous desk research survey of 22 international HealthGrid projects has showed. The majority of applications are project based, which puts a time limit of funding, but also of goals and objectives. Given this situation, we analysed two initiatives, WISDOM and MammoGrid from an economic, cost-benefit perspective, and evaluated the potential for these initiatives to be brought to market as self-financing, sustainable services. We conclude that the topic of HealthGrids should be pursued further because of the substantial potential for net gains to society at large. The most significant hurdle to sustainability - the discrepancy between social benefits and private incentives - can be solved by sound business models.
Subject(s)
Commerce , Medical Informatics/economics , Cooperative Behavior , Cost-Benefit Analysis , Medical Informatics/organization & administration , Organizational Case StudiesABSTRACT
The Emergency Care Summary (ECS) in Scotland provides essential clinical and demographic information about patients needing unscheduled or emergency care. Information about patients' medications, adverse drug reactions and allergies is transferred twice every day from GP systems to the ECS. Access is then available to authorised health-care professionals at the national help line, at out-of-hours services and in accident and emergency departments. An economic analysis of the ECS implementation showed that annual benefits exceeded annual costs after about seven years. Approximately 77% of the benefits were non-financial and 23% from redeployed finance. No cash savings were planned and none were realised. As ECS utilisation increased from 2006, the net benefits became positive. This relationship between utilisation and net benefits is a common feature of successful e-health investment.
Subject(s)
Emergency Medical Services/economics , Medical Records Systems, Computerized/economics , National Health Programs/economics , After-Hours Care/economics , Cost-Benefit Analysis , Health Services Accessibility/economics , Humans , Medical Record Linkage , Medical Records Systems, Computerized/statistics & numerical data , ScotlandABSTRACT
While differences in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in European general practices are decreasing more and more, actual use rates - in particular, for more advanced applications - are about as different as the languages spoken by GPs throughout the European Union. This is one finding of a representative survey among GPs in Europe carried out by empirica on behalf of the European Commission. The resulting patchwork pattern of eHealth use shows that there is still some distance to go before all the potential benefits of eHealth in general practice can be reaped by all the EU member states.
Subject(s)
Information Systems/supply & distribution , Information Systems/statistics & numerical data , Physicians, Family , European Union , Family Practice , Health Care Surveys , Humans , Information Systems/standardsABSTRACT
Various chiral N-palmitoyl amino acid surfactants (AAS) derived from methionine, proline, leucine, threonine, phenylalanine and phenylglycine were prepared and converted to their sodium salt. The properties of the aggregates formed in aqueous solution were studied for both the optically-active compounds and their racemic mixture. Characterization was made by surface tensiometry, fluorimetry, dynamic light scattering, circular dichroism (CD) and transmission electron microscopy. It appeared that most of the AAS studied in this work spontaneously formed different types of aggregates, including micrometer-sized aggregates. No significant difference could be found between the critical aggregation concentration (cac) value of pure enantiomers and that of the racemic forms. CD spectra did not reveal any aggregation-induced chirality.
