Cost Of Assurance Research Articles

Burden of herpes zoster: the direct and comorbidity costs of herpes zoster events in hospitalized patients over 50 years in France.

BackgroundThe objectives of this study were to describe hospital stays related to HZ and to evaluate the direct and indirect cost of hospitalizations due to HZ among patients aged over 50 years.MethodsThe hospitalizations of people aged over 50 years were selected from the French national hospital 2011 database (PMSI) using ICD-10 diagnosis codes for HZ.Firstly, stays with HZ as principal or related diagnostic were described through the patient characteristics, type of hospitalization and the related costs. Secondly, a retrospective case–control analysis was performed on stays with HZ as comorbidity in 5 main hospitalizations causes (circulatory, respiratory, osteo-articular, digestive systems and diabetes) to assess the impact of HZ as co-morbidity on the length of stay, mortality rate and costs.ResultsIn the first analysis, 2,571 hospital stays were collected (60 % of women, mean age: 76.3 years and mean LOS: 9.5 days). The total health assurance costs were 10,8 M€. Mean cost per hospital stay was 4,206€. In the second analysis, a significant difference in LOS and costs was shown when HZ was associated as comorbidity in other hospitalization’s causes.ConclusionsHZ directly impacts on the hospital cost. When present as comorbidity for other medical reasons, HZ significantly increases the length of hospital stay with subsequent economic burden for the French Health System.

Scaling Down to Scale Up: A Health Economic Analysis of Integrating Point-of-Care Syphilis Testing into Antenatal Care in Zambia during Pilot and National Rollout Implementation.

Maternal syphilis results in an estimated 500,000 stillbirths and neonatal deaths annually in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the existence of national guidelines for antenatal syphilis screening, syphilis testing is often limited by inadequate laboratory and staff services. Recent availability of inexpensive rapid point-of-care syphilis tests (RST) can improve access to antenatal syphilis screening. A 2010 pilot in Zambia explored the feasibility of integrating RST within prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV services. Following successful demonstration, the Zambian Ministry of Health adopted RSTs into national policy in 2011. Cost data from the pilot and 2012 preliminary national rollout were extracted from project records, antenatal registers, clinic staff interviews, and facility observations, with the aim of assessing the cost and quality implications of scaling up a successful pilot into a national rollout. Start-up, capital, and recurrent cost inputs were collected, including costs of extensive supervision and quality monitoring during the pilot. Costs were analysed from a provider’s perspective, incremental to existing antenatal services. Total and unit costs were calculated and a multivariate sensitivity analysis was performed. Our accompanying qualitative study by Ansbro et al. (2015) elucidated quality assurance and supervisory system challenges experienced during rollout, which helped explain key cost drivers. The average unit cost per woman screened during rollout ($11.16) was more than triple the pilot unit cost ($3.19). While quality assurance costs were much lower during rollout, the increased unit costs can be attributed to several factors, including higher RST prices and lower RST coverage during rollout, which reduced economies of scale. Pilot and rollout cost drivers differed due to implementation decisions related to training, supervision, and quality assurance. This study explored the cost of integrating RST into antenatal care in pilot and national rollout settings, and highlighted important differences in costs that may be observed when moving from pilot to scale-up.

Quality Cost Analysis of Typical Forging Based on SPC and DEA Model

In order to control the quality costs of forgings efficiently and ensure the optimization of enterprise production value input and benefit output, using piston, output shaft and other typical forgings as application objects, choosing cold and warm forging process instead of the former single hot forging or cold forging process, reinforcing Statistical Process Control (SPC) of processing quality and appropriately distributing quality failure cost and quality assurance cost in order to efficiently match the total cost of quality, quality process capacity index and production program so that the stability of forging quality can be improved. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to contrast and analysis the quality cost data of new process and old process, of which the result shows that the technical input and benefit output of new process accord with mass production requirements in the prior period of enterprise industrialization.

Limited Business Knowledge Investors Perceptions Of Auditor Independence In The Provision Of Assurance On Unregulated Nonfinancial Disclosures

Vasarhelyi and Zheng (2013) report that more than 4,000 filing errors have been reported in XBRL interactive data following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions 2009 interactive data reporting mandate. Alles and Gray (2012) report that demand exists for externally provided assurance of XBRL filings if the cost of assurance appears less significant to clients. While the discussion of assurance on XBRL filings generally addresses managements confidence in the accuracy assurance on financial data, a void in the literature exists regarding auditor independence in the provision of assurance on XBRL-generated nonfinancial information. Further, Pinsker and Wheeler (2009) note that limited business knowledge (LBK, hereafter) investors perceptions of and reactions to assurance services have not been fully examined. The results of the present research indicate that LBK investors may be more tolerant of a nonindependent attestation on XBRL nonfinancial data with respect to their long-term investments, but not necessarily for their short-term investments. In addition, companies that provide assurance on voluntarily reported nonfinancial information may feel a level of comfort in the fact that LBK investors do not feel that they would win a lawsuit against the company for a mistake in this information.

Value-cognitive boosting with a support vector machine for cross-project defect prediction

It is well-known that software defect prediction is one of the most important tasks for software quality improvement. The use of defect predictors allows test engineers to focus on defective modules. Thereby testing resources can be allocated effectively and the quality assurance costs can be reduced. For within-project defect prediction (WPDP), there should be sufficient data within a company to train any prediction model. Without such local data, cross-project defect prediction (CPDP) is feasible since it uses data collected from similar projects in other companies. Software defect datasets have the class imbalance problem increasing the difficulty for the learner to predict defects. In addition, the impact of imbalanced data on the real performance of models can be hidden by the performance measures chosen. We investigate if the class imbalance learning can be beneficial for CPDP. In our approach, the asymmetric misclassification cost and the similarity weights obtained from distributional characteristics are closely associated to guide the appropriate resampling mechanism. We performed the effect size A-statistics test to evaluate the magnitude of the improvement. For the statistical significant test, we used Wilcoxon rank-sum test. The experimental results show that our approach can provide higher prediction performance than both the existing CPDP technique and the existing class imbalance technique.

Benefits and Costs of Auditor's Assurance: Evidence from the Review of Quarterly Financial Statements

AbstractEven though there is a worldwide consensus as to the necessity of an audit of annual financial statements for public companies, there is divergence of views as to the review of interim financial statements. While some jurisdictions make it mandatory (e.g., Australia, France, United States), others allow the review without requiring it (e.g., Canada, United Kingdom). Using a sample of companies listed in Canada, we examine the costs associated with these reviews and the benefits they generate in terms of improvement in the quality of interim financial statements for the years 2004 and 2005. Controlling for the decision to purchase the reviews, we find that audit fees are 18 percent higher for firms with interim reviews and, contrary to many regulators' assumption, we find no evidence that this cost increase is proportionally higher for smaller firms. Regarding the benefits of interim reviews, we find no significant association between either accruals‐ or nonaccruals‐based measures of earnings management and the fact that the interim statements are reviewed by the auditor, neither in the interim reports nor in those of the fourth quarter. The results suggest that auditors' involvement with interim reports may not be as effective as previously thought at controlling the quality of interim financial statements.

The Value Proposition for Assurance of JPL Systems

This paper presents a value proposition for systems assurance. The need for a value proposition is motivated by common misconceptions about the definition of assurance and the value of performing systems assurance activities. The focus of the value proposition is that assurance reduces uncertainty so that projects can make more confident decisions about their systems. Applying the value proposition has led to insights into the nature of assurance and has improved the practice of software assurance, where it has been applied at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Ongoing work on using the value proposition for “value-based tailoring” of requirements and integrating value considerations into assurance cost models are also discussed.

An Insight upon the Effect of Quality Assurance on the Cost of Software Development

The requirement of a software to be free from any kind of error,defect or fault is still a very big challenge to the IT industry.Software system’s size, lifetime and complexity is continuously growing but there is often not much flexibility to deadlines and budget.Also,cost is the main factor which should be considered before developing a software project.A possible software failure may lead to millions of breakdown costs, loss of reputation, or even injure people.But,when this is done correctly,it helps in the successful completion of the project. This paper focusses on providing an insight upon finding the right balance between quality and quality assurance costs during different phases of software development life cycle which in turn would increase organizational economic status, as well as conceptual and economic perspective.

Analysis of Cost of Governance and Revenue Assurance

The paper aims at assessing cost of governance and revenue assurance mechanisms. The methodology adopted by the paper involves the use of quantitative data for 9 years, from 2002 to 2010, which was generated from the annual report an d accounts of the Central Bank of Iran. The data generated for the study was analyzed us phrasing and simple percentage analysis. The finding of the paper shows that Cost of go governance at state level has greatly increased in Iran. Similarly, the trend of Extra-Budgetary Expenditure put to question the implementation of budgets at the States. The paper conclude s that the task of reducing cost of governance for revenue assurance at states level does not rest on the executive, legislature and judiciary alone. It is task demanding the collective effort of all stakeholders. Finally, the paper recommends that there is the need to reduce recurrent expenditure to sustainable level through reducing waste, inefficiency, corruption and duplication in government, as well as, make capital spending more effective.

Application of Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) in grading of suppliers: A case study

Research in market and selection of the best suppliers is the main task in organization. Lack of attention to supply of materials and items and lack of collaboration with suppliers increase purchase cost, quality control and quality assurance costs, leading to non- satisfaction of products and services. The suppliers should be graded and selected based on criteria in order to collaborate with the supply of the materials. In this research, the main criteria in evaluating and grading of suppliers of firms α were determined based on library studies and interview with experts, using questionnaire. The importance of each criterion was specified based on Shanon entropy method. The results of MADM model showed that TOPSIS is the best model for grading of suppliers. The performance of providers was studied and their grades were determined by using TOPSIS model. Key words: Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM), supply chain, TOPOIS, MODM, MCDM.

Outlook for Reducing Costs of Metrological Assurance in the Oil and Gas Industry

Basic trends in the process of reducing costs for metrological assurance in the oil and gas industry are outlined. One such trend is related to the use of measuring instruments and measurement systems equipped with the function of metrological self-check and the second with the use of virtual measuring instruments and systems.

Harnessing the value of data in asset management for production assurance and to lower operating costs

With rising costs, a tight labour market, and prolonged global economic uncertainty, it is unsurprising that investment decisions are being re-evaluated across Australia's resources and energy industry. Amid this tough market environment, effective asset management has never been more important. Asset management was first adopted by Australia's oil and gas industry in the early 90s and is now well entrenched. There is widespread acknowledgement that it breaks down project complexity and plays a critical role in maximising project net present value. If done well, asset management takes a long-term view of asset life-cycles–from concept and creation, to services that deliver production assurance and lower costs. While these principles are well understood across the market, asset data capture and analysis–a critical element to successful asset management–requires ongoing review. Accurate and comprehensive asset data is the basis on which all good asset-management decisions are made. Developments in geographic information systems, SAP, and cloud-based technology are redefining the way asset data is collected, stored, analysed, and fed back into asset-management decisions. Asset managers of oil and gas assets should, therefore, be asking themselves three important questions: Are we using the latest technology to collect, store, and analyse asset data? Which project stakeholders need to interact with the data? Do our existing or planned asset-management models have the capacity to integrate and evolve with new technology as it develops?

Financial Assurance for Environmental Protection: Trends and Opportunities

A basic moral hazard problem has potential to avoid socially beneficial development of natural resources. Various financial assurance mechanisms have evolved to satisfy regulatory requirements for credible environmental protection. But recent macroeconomic and financial market developments have increased the cost of financial assurance. In addition, traditional methods of financial assurance may be inappropriate for addressing long-term risks to water quality, an issue of growing concern. Revised collateral requirements along with explicit capital safety standards can reduce the cost of long-term financial assurance for environmental protection and reclamation by enabling resource developers to exploit the benefits of portfolio diversification. These policy proposals may be particularly beneficial in less-developed institutional regimes, where enforcement is less effective and costly regulation is more likely to result in unsanctioned exploitation.

Value-centric design of the internet-of-things solution for food supply chain: Value creation, sensor portfolio and information fusion

The revolution of Internet-of-Things (IoT) is reshaping the modern food supply chains with promising business prospects. To be successful in practice, the IoT solutions should create "income-centric" values beyond the conventional "traceability-centric" values. To accomplish what we promised to users, sensor portfolios and information fusion must correspond to the new requirements introduced by this income-centric value creation. In this paper, we propose a value-centric business-technology joint design framework. Based on it the income-centric added-values including shelf life prediction, sales premium, precision agriculture, and reduction of assurance cost are identified and assessed. Then corresponding sensor portfolios are developed and implemented. Three-tier information fusion architecture is proposed as well as examples about acceleration data processing, self-learning shelf life prediction and real-time supply chain re-planning. The feasibilities of the proposed design framework and solution have been confirmed by the field trials and an implemented prototype system.

A Relative Cost Framework of Demand for External Assurance of XBRL Filings

ABSTRACTThere has been much discussion in the academic literature and in the XBRL community on the role of audit firms in providing assurance services for XBRL filings, especially now that the use of XBRL has been mandated in the United States. This paper presents the development of a framework of the demand for external assurance of XBRL filings predicated on two relative cost arguments. First, that in the absence of a mandate for XBRL filings to be assured by an external auditor, a manager will compare the cost of obtaining external assurance against the cost of obtaining confidence on the filings internally. Second, managers will be reluctant to pay more for external assurance on an XBRL filing than they paid to prepare it. The former is called the external cost relative to internal cost comparison, and the latter the external cost relative to preparation cost comparison. Based on our relative cost framework, it is predicted that there will only be a role for externally provided assurance of XBRL filings if the cost of that assurance can be either reduced or appear less significant to clients. The former outcome can be brought about by shifting assurance from the XBRL filings themselves to assurance of the preparer through a SSAE No. 16/SAS No. 70 report, thereby converting the cost of XBRL assurance from a variable cost to a fixed cost that is spread among many filers. External auditors can also attempt to make the cost of XBRL assurance less salient to managers by folding that cost into their total audit fees.

Decision Method of Equipment Reliability Assurance Based on Multi-Level Management

This paper classifies reliability assurance management strategies into four modes, i.e., reactive mode, preventive mode, predictive mode and proactive mode, advanced a decision method of equipment reliability assurance based on multilevel management. The risks of equipment failures are also categorized into four levels according to their degrees of severity and occurring rates. In order to improve pertinence and reduce cost of reliability assurance, it is proposed to adopt a multi-level management strategy in handling the risks. For this purpose, a model for relationship between risk levels and reliability assurance modes, a model for equipment reliability assurance cost and a model for equipment risk increments after reliability assurance have been established. The applied risk management mode for each concrete risk is determined by minimizing the total reliability assurance cost with risk increment serving as a constraint condition. The proposed approach has been demonstrated by using an example.

Mathematical modelling for determining economic batch size and optimal number of deliveries for EPQ model with quality assurance

The classic economic production quantity (EPQ) model assumes a continuous inventory-issuing policy for satisfying product demand and a perfect production for all items produced. However, in a real-life vendor–buyer integrated system, a multi-delivery policy is often used in lieu of continuous issuing policy and it is inevitable to generate defective items during a production run. This study addresses these issues by incorporating multiple deliveries of the finished batch, customer's inventory-holding cost and manufacturer's quality assurance cost into an EPQ model with the imperfect reworking of random defective items. Mathematical modelling and analyses are employed. Convexity of the long-run expected cost function is proved by the use of Hessian matrix equations, and the closed-form solutions in terms of the optimal lot size and optimal number of deliveries are obtained. The research results are demonstrated with a numerical example with a discussion on its practical usage.

Resource management to increase connection capacity of real-time streaming in mobile WiMAX

With large network coverage, high transmission rate, strong quality of service (QoS) assurance and inexpensive deployment cost, mobile WiMAX has emerged as one of the most promising broadband wireless access technologies. However, resource management is still a challenging issue between system capacity and user gratification, especially for multimedia transmission which ordinarily requires strict delay constraints. In this study, the authors propose an adaptive call admission control in order to efficiently increase system capacity. The control mechanism can admit an incoming video on demand (VOD) connection establishing even without sufficient idle slots/bandwidth to meet the QoS requirement. With consideration of the existing VOD user stream buffer (USB), our scheduling mechanism performs adaptive admission control and QoS provision feasible each time. Also employing adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) scheme, each connection keep its fluency of real-time video performance over dynamic wireless channel status. The authors evaluate the concurrent stream connection number and connection blocking probability with different resource management strategies.

Sharing the Burden of Collective Security in the European Union

AbstractThis article compares European Union (EU) burden-sharing in security governance distinguishing between assurance, prevention, protection, and compellence policies. We employ joint-product models and examine the variation in the level of publicness, the asymmetry of the distribution of costs and benefits, and aggregation technologies in each policy domain. Joint-product models predict equal burden-sharing for protection and assurance because of their respective weakest-link and summation aggregation technologies with symmetric costs. Prevention is also characterized by the technology of summation, but asymmetry of costs implies uneven burden-sharing. Uneven burden-sharing is predicted for compellence because it has the largest asymmetry of costs and a best-shot aggregation technology. Evaluating burden-sharing relative to a country's ability to contribute, Kendalltau-tests examine the rank-correlation between security burden and the capacity of EU member states. These tests show that the smaller EU members disproportionately shoulder the costs of assurance and protection; wealthier EU members carry a somewhat disproportionate burden in the provision of prevention, and larger EU members in the provision of compellence. When analyzing contributions relative to expected benefits, asymmetric marginal costs can largely explain uneven burden-sharing. The main conclusion is that the aggregated burden of collective security governance in the EU is shared quite evenly.

A Common Sense Way to Make the Business Case for Software Assurance

This article demonstrates how a true cost/benefit for secure software can be derived using three generic practice areas: (1) threat/risk understanding, (2) implementation of security requirements, and (3) operational security testing. Having an accurate cost for these aspects of the software assurance process would allow decision makers to make intelligent decisions about the level of investment they wish to make. WHY WE NEED TO DISTINGUISH SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FROM SOFTWARE ASSURANCE The aim of this article is to demonstrate how a common valuation model can be used to make a dollars and cents business case for software assurance. However, in order to do that, it is first necessary to talk about why the elements of software assurance cost have to be differentiated from those of traditional software development. A precise delineation of the cost elements of secure software assurance is required because the total cost of anything is the sum of the costs of its parts. And unfortunately, there is no commonly agreed-on line of demarcation between the activities that constitute software assurance and those associated with producing a correct product. It should be apparent that the cost of producing the product should be different from the cost required to make sure that the product is secure. Yet when it comes time to assign the actual cost associated with each process, the distinction between product quality assurance and product security gets lost. Profit margins drive most business decisions. That is why it is so dangerous to over-inflate the price of secure software. Price inflation happens because businesses tend to confuse the costs required to ensure against exploitation with the much greater costs of producing a correct product. The fact that defects are a given in software does not change the ethical obligation of the maker to produce Antonio Drommi