BACKGROUND Healthcare workers are still recognised as a high-risk group for latent TB infection (LTBI). Therefore, the screening of people employed in the healthcare sector for active and LTBI is fundamental to infection control programmes in German hospitals. It was the aim of the study to determine the prevalence and putative risk factors of LTBI. METHODS We tested 2028 employees in the hea...

In healthcare, a promising direction for innovation lies in harnessing the innovation potential of patients. Web-based platforms have created a new and powerful route to open innovation in healthcare. In a sector where knowledge resources within organizational boundaries are limited, this study is focused on understanding how online innovation intermediaries (OIIs) in healthcare help to transfe...

OBJECTIVES From 2020, the ownership of community pharmacies in Estonia will be limited to the pharmacy profession, and the vertical integration of wholesale companies and community pharmacies will not be allowed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the perception of different stakeholders in primary healthcare toward the new regulations of the community pharmacy sector in Estonia. METHODS A...

Workforce shortages, fiscal restraint, complex healthcare organizations, increasing patient acuity, the explosion of knowledge and technology and the ever expanding role of nurses in healthcare have reinforced the importance of new graduates arriving in the work setting with the ability to move seamlessly into practice. This idea of moving seamlessly into practice is often referred to as practi...

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become important for many public services as they seek to become more efficient and effective. Authorities in Norway have since 1997 formulated strategic plans for ICT in healthcare, striving to obtain seamless care and funding in varying degree have been allocated in order to achieve results. In this chapter we present several initiatives conc...

Numerous studies have reported the rapid increase in the number of individuals who use smartphones. However, smartphones appear to be increasingly used by healthcare workers, particularly physicians and nurses. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the readiness of medical doctors and patients with chronic conditions in using and adopting smartphones for communication. This study employs th...

nancing (RBF) as one of fi ve actions being taken as part of the Global Campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals and plans to support the use of RBF through the World Bank and in bilateral agreements with selected countries focusing on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing child and maternal mortality (MDG 4 and 5).RBF-schemes can be targeted at different lev...

New technological developments affect almost every sector of our daily lives, including the healthcare sector. We evaluated how connected health applications, subsumed as eHealth and telemedicine, are perceived in relation to socio-demographic characteristics. The current cross-sectional, online survey collected self-reported data from a non-probability convenience sample of 562 Austrian adults...

BACKGROUND Inadequate access to affordable essential medicines poses a challenge to achieving Universal Health Coverage. Access to essential medicines for children has been in the spotlight in recent research. However, information from the end users of medicines, i.e. patients is scarce. Obtaining information at a household level is integral to understanding how people access, obtain and use me...