The economic crisis brought an unprecedented attention to the issue of health system sustainability in the developed world. The discussion, however, has been mainly limited to "traditional" issues of cost-effectiveness, quality of care, and, lately, patient involvement. Not enough attention has yet been paid to the issue of who pays and, more importantly, to the sustainability of financing. Thi...

Over the past decade there have been a large number of significant innovations in manufacturing which have resulted in more flexible and cost efficient methods and higher quality products, as manufacturers have set about upgrading their processes, systems and performance. This study compares the use of technologies and improvement programs between OECD and Non-OECD countries, and also between s...

The increased cost of accessing energy and the effects on economic growth (GDP) across regions is one of grave concern [1]. The Cost implication of energy supply often shapes regional energy policies across the globe. This paper presents an empirical investigation into the relationship between energy generation and economic growth, while also investigating probable threats to sustainable energy...

An extended economic production quantity (EPQ) model under stochastic demand is investigated in this paper, where a fixed lot sizing policy is implemented to reduce the complexity of production planning and inventory control, and outsourcing with a secondary facility is used to supplement the lot sizing policy and to cope with the random demand. The considered cost includes: setup cost for the ...

BACKGROUND Retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes mellitus that if detected early by regular retinal examinations can be treated; thus, blindness can be delayed or prevented. Providing high-quality retinal screening is difficult, especially in rural and remote areas. Canada's First Nations population has a higher prevalence of diabetes and is, in general, more geographically isolated ...

1. This paper summarizes the methodology for general Cost of Illness (COI) studies and provides guidelines that others can use to set up and carry out a similar study. Special attention is given to the need to use the OECD’s System of Health Accounts (SHA) as a framework for international reporting on outcomes of a national COI analysis. The paper is based on experiences of the authors with a s...

PURPOSE The incidence, and thus the economic burden of cancer are increasing rapidly with prolongation of lifespan thanks to newly-developed anticancer drugs. Globally the number of newly diagnosed cases is expected to rise to 21.4 million by the year 2030. In this survey, our purpose was to investigate the level of awareness of oncologists and cancer patients concerning the treatment costs of ...

in the fundamental production inventory model, in order to solve the economic production quantity (epq) we always fix both the demand quantity and the production quantity per day. but, in the real situation, both of them probably will have little disturbances every day. therefore, we should fuzzify both of them to solve the economic production quantity (q*) per cycle. using α-cut for defuzzific...