Research opportunities in the regulatory aspects of electronic markets.

Regulation has not been a primary focus of research within the information systems discipline or the research domain of electronic markets. A framework is presented to support understanding of the field. A review of published works has established that many research opportunities exist. The usefulness of the framework is validated by means of an examination of the platform-based business sector, with particular reference to Uber.

ICRP publication 109. Application of the Commission's Recommendations for the protection of people in emergency exposure situations.

This report was prepared to provide advice on the application of the Commission's 2007 Recommendations. The advice includes the preparedness for, and response to, all radiation emergency exposure situations defined as: 'situations that may occur during the operation of a planned situation, or from a malicious act, or from any other unexpected situation and require urgent action in order to avoid or reduce undesirable consequences'. An emergency exposure situation may evolve, in time, into an existing exposure situation. The Commission's advice for these types of situation is published in two complementary documents (that for emergency exposure situations in this report, that for existing exposure situations following emergency exposure situations in a forthcoming report entitled 'Application of the Commission's recommendations to the protection of individuals living in long-term contaminated territories after a nuclear accident or a radiation emergency'). The Commission's 2007 Recommendations re-state its principles of justification and optimisation, and the requirement to protect against severe deterministic injury, as applying to emergency exposure situations. For the purpose of protection, reference levels for emergency exposure situations should be set in the band of 20-100 mSv effective dose (acute or per year). The reference level represents the level of residual dose or risk above which it is generally judged to be inappropriate to plan to allow exposures to occur. The Commission considers that a dose rising towards 100 mSv will almost always justify protective measures. Protection against all exposures, above or below the reference level, should be optimised. More complete protection is offered by simultaneously considering all exposure pathways and all relevant protection options when deciding on the optimum course of action in the context of an overall protection strategy. Such an overall protection strategy must be justified, resulting in more good than harm. In order to optimise an overall strategy, it is necessary to identify the dominant exposure pathways, the time scales over which components of the dose will be received, and the potential effectiveness of individual protective options. If, in application of an overall protection strategy, protection measures do not achieve their planned residual dose objectives, or worse, result in exposures exceeding reference levels defined at the planning stage, a re-assessment of the situation is warranted. In planning and in the event of an emergency, decisions to terminate protective measures should have due regard for the appropriate reference level. The change from an emergency exposure situation to an existing exposure situation will be based on a decision by the authority responsible for the overall response. This transition may happen at any time during an emergency exposure situation, and may take place at different geographical locations at different times. The transfer should be undertaken in a co-ordinated and fully transparent manner, and should be understood by all parties involved.

21st century challenges in radiation protection and shielding: draft 2005 recommendations of ICRP.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection regularly examines the status of its recommendations and reviews the increasing knowledge of the effects of exposure to ionising radiation in order to decide whether new recommendations are needed. The Commission strives to make its system more coherent and comprehensible, while recognising the need for stability in international and national regulations, many of which have, only fairly recently, implemented the 1990 Recommendations. However, new scientific data have been produced since 1990 and there have been societal developments in that more openness or transparency is expected in developing new recommendations and, in addition, there has been a move from the utilitarian approach of 'the greatest good for the greatest number', to one with more concern for the 'individual', all of which have inevitably led to some changes in the formulation of the recommendations. This paper outlines the proposals for the 2005 Recommendations.

A history of the international commission on radiological protection.

Within twelve months of the discovery of x rays, papers appeared in the literature reporting adverse effects from high exposure. By the time of the First World War, several countries were proposing restrictions for the exposure of radiation workers. In 1925, the first International Congress of Radiology, held in London, considered the need for a protection committee, which it established at its second Congress in Stockholm in 1928. This paper traces the history of the development, by ICRP, of its policies and the personalities involved in their development from its inception up to the modern era. The paper follows the progress from the early controls on worker doses to avoid deterministic effects, through the identification of stochastic effects to the concerns about increasing public exposure. The key features of the Recommendations made by ICRP from 1928 up to the current 1990 version are identified.

A history of the international commission on radiological protection.

Within twelve months of the discovery of x rays, papers appeared in the literature reporting adverse effects from high exposure. By the time of the First World War, several countries were proposing restrictions for the exposure of radiation workers. In 1925, the first International Congress of Radiology, held in London, considered the need for a protection committee, which it established at its second Congress in Stockholm in 1928. This paper traces the history of the development, by ICRP, of its policies and the personalities involved in their development from its inception up to the modern era. The paper follows the progress from the early controls on worker doses to avoid deterministic effects, through the identification of stochastic effects to the concerns about increasing public exposure. The key features of the Recommendations made by ICRP from 1928 up to the current 1990 version are identified.

Draft recommendations from ICRP at the start of the 21st century.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection has been encouraging discussion, during the past few years, on the best way of expressing radiological protection philosophy in its next recommendations, which it plans to publish in 2005. The present recommendations were initiated by Publication 60 in 1990 and have been complemented by additional publications over the last 12 y. It is now clear that there is a need for the Commission to summarize the totality of the number of numerical values that it has recommended in some 10 reports. This has been done in this paper and from these a way forward is indicated to produce a simplified and more coherent statement of protection philosophy for the start of the 21st century. A radical revision is not envisaged, rather a coherent statement of current policy and a simplification in its application is proposed.

e-Consent: The design and implementation of consumer consent mechanisms in an electronic environment.

The effective coordination of health care relies on communication of confidential information about consumers between different health and community care services. However, consumers must be able to give or withhold "e-Consent" to those who wish to access their electronic health information. There are several possible forms for e-Consent. In the general consent model, a patient provides blanket consent for access to his or her information by an organization for all future information requests. Conversely, general denial explicitly denies consent for information to be used in future circumstances, and in each new episode of care, a new consent would be needed to obtain information. In the general consent with specific denial model, a patient attaches specific exclusion conditions to his or her general approval to future accesses. In contrast, in the general denial with explicit consent model, a patient issues a blanket block on all future accesses but allows the inclusion of future use under specified conditions. There also are several alternative functions for an e-Consent system. Consent could be captured as a matter of legal record. E-Consent systems could be more active by prompting clinicians to indicate that they have noted consent conditions before they access a record. Finally, the record of patient consent could be fully active and used as a gatekeeper in a distributed information environment. There probably will need to be some form of data object that is associated with patient information. This e-Consent object (or e-Co) will contain the specific conditions under which the data to which it is attached can be retrieved. Given the complexity of clinical work and the substantial variation we can expect in an individual's desire to make his or her personal medical details available, it is unlikely a "one size fits all" approach to e-Consent will work. Consequently, with a well-chosen consent design, it should be possible to balance the specific need for privacy of some of the population against the desire by others to err on the side of clinical safety, and clinicians desire to minimize the burden that an electronic consent mechanism would impose.