Two converging factors highlight the need to optimize the use of prophylactic antibiotics in surgery. First, there is an increasing global emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The problem is complex and multi-faceted, but the selective force of overuse of antibiotics plays an important role. The second factor is the transition to the era of managed care requiring both cost containment and qua...

The purpose of this study was to assess the validity of the CDC-RTI Diabetes CostEffectiveness Model by comparing rates of diabetes incidence and complications to existing published results. We performed 47 internal and external validation exercises comparing the model-simulated outcomes with the outcomes from 24 published trials. To simulate the outcomes for each published study, we input a co...

Regression testing is an expensive activity that can account for a large proportion of the software maintenance budget. Because engineers add tests into test suites as software evolves, over time, increased test suite size makes revalidation of the software more expensive. Regression test selection, test suite reduction, and test case prioritization techniques can help with this, by reducing th...

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare disease but PAH treatment cost is very high. Nowadays, there has been no cost-effectiveness information related to PAH treatments in Thailand. The aim of this study was to systematically review economic evaluation studies of drugs treatment in PAH. Studies reporting in term of clinical outcomes and costs during January 1990 to October 2012 were se...

Introduction: Sub-Saharan Africa (Africa) remains the most severely HIV affected region in the world. As there will not be a cure or vaccine against HIV for many years, primary HIV prevention remains key to HIV control. Primary prevention currently includes treatment of curable sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Here, the evidence for curable STI treatment as an HIV prevention strategy in ...

Federal electric vehicle (EV) policies in the United States currently include vehicle purchase subsidies linked to EV battery capacity and subsidies for installing charging stations. We assess the costeffectiveness of increased battery capacity vs. nondomestic charging infrastructure installation for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as alternate methods to reduce gasoline consumption for cars, ...

This paper lists various limitations in 2.5G, 3G cellular networks regarding services, and contrasts this to a characterization of fourth-generation wireless networks (4G). In order to investigate 4G’s feasibility, costeffectiveness, necessary functionality, and its potential with respect to services we created a testbed by adding wireless extensions to a public Gigabit IPnetwork, which was fur...

Over the past decade there has been worldwide interest in the effect of nurse staffi ng on quantifi able patient outcomes. In numerous multi-centre studies of hospitalised adults, in-hospital mortality has been reported to be inversely associated with nurse staffi ng levels.1–3 There are fewer published data establishing the trade-offs and associations between resources provided and quality of ...

Background and Purpose—Although stroke units reduce mortality and institutionalization, their comparative costeffectiveness is unknown. Methods— Healthcare, social services, and informal care costs were compared for 447 acute stroke patients randomly assigned to stroke unit, stroke team, or domiciliary stroke care. Prospective and retrospective methods were used to identify resource use over 12...

In addition, economic analysis helps policymakers determine which of several alternative intervention programs provides the most benefits per dollar spent. For example, policymakers may assess the costeffectiveness of prevention versus treatment programs or broad-based versus targeted prevention programs. Focusing on this latter policy issue, suppose that policymakers wish to reduce the number ...