Can We Make Better Decisions If We Remove Quality of Life from the Value Equation?

How can we enhance the value of laboratory tests?

Today, the pressures on the healthcare systems for the controlling of the costs are extreme and all sectors try to demonstrate the value of their services by justifying the activities and expenditures so the value can be describe in terms like quality, efficiency, effectiveness, patient satisfaction, cost effectiveness .The value of the lab testing is generally directed to their costs and the c...

How IRBs make decisions: should we worry if they disagree?

There is at present, far too little empirical research into the actual decision-making process of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and it is sobering to be reminded by Robert Klitzman’s article that while theoretical debates might rage and prove fertile ground for new theories and better ways of approaching research ethics; ethics committee members must try to make sense of these concepts and...

Cord Blood Transplantation: Can We Make it Better?

Umbilical cord blood is an established source of hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation. It enjoys several advantages over bone marrow or peripheral blood, including increased tolerance for Human Leukocyte Antigen mismatches, decreased incidence of graft-versus-host disease, and easy availability. Unrelated cord blood does have limitations, however, especially in the treatment of adults. ...

Computer-Mediated Communication: Can we Make it Better?

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is fundamentally different to face-to-face (FTF) communication. The low bandwidth of CMC filters out important social and contextual cues, which results in behaviour in users that is different to FTF communication. There are a number of social psychological theories that attempt to explain why reduced social cues in CMC affect behaviour. This work attempts ...

We must--and we can--do better.