Different Types Of Services Research Articles

Vehicle location models for Emergency Medical Services. An application for a Colombian company

Ambulance location, in a certain area of coverage, is a key element in reducing the waiting time of a potential patient and the initiation a healthcare service in Emergency Medical Services (EMS). The Operations Research area, developing and solving adequate mathematical models, helps to make good decisions in EMS. We propose two variants of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model for locating heterogeneous fleet vehicles to support different types of services in emergency medical care, taking into account the operational requirements of a health care service company in Colombia. The proposed models do not exactly match any of those found in the literature. The models are solved with Gurobi solver and the modeling language AMPL and they are successfully validated with historical data of the company under study and some estimates based on external sources. These obtained results are compared using an adaptation of the concept of Preparedness taken from the literature for ambulance positioning, as regard to measure the readiness of the system to the expected demand. The new results show that the relevance of each model depends of the prioritization of services and/or areas that the company considers.

Evaluation of Quality of the e-Commerce Service

E-commerce market continues to grow. It is so popular because more and more people are connected to the Internet. Nevertheless, not all online e-shops can be so proud of its conversion rates. The customers' satisfaction with the services of different types of e-shops are affected by many different factors. The authors can say that a satisfied customer is the one who maintains a good reputation of the sellers' despite of the disadvantages which he had to face, such as damage of product during its transport, the need to make a warranty repair. To evaluate the customers' satisfaction in the chosen e-shop, the authors decided to use two methods which according to them can be complementary in this case, these methods are following: the Servqual method and the Importance/Performance analysis (IPA). Then, advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce were described. Next, the research methods were characterized. Later, the survey and its results were shown. The research had the form of an online questionnaire. It was addressed to customers of the chosen e-shop. The Servqual method was used to evaluate the quality level of offered services in general and analyze the Servqual index (perceptions of the real services minus customers' expectations). The Importance/Performance analysis was used to indicate which areas of the service really need the intervention of the research e-shop.

Building web-based services for practical exercises in parallel and distributed computing

The paper presents an approach to the design and implementation of web-based environments for practical exercises in parallel and distributed computing (PDC). The presented approach introduces minimal development and operational costs by relying on Everest, a general-purpose platform for building computational web services. The flexibility of proposed service-oriented architecture enables the development of different types of services targeting various use cases and PDC topics. The generic execution services support the execution of different types of parallel and distributed programs on corresponding computing systems, while the assignment evaluation services implement the execution and evaluation of solutions to programming assignments. As was demonstrated by teaching two introductory PDC courses, the presented approach helps to enhance students’ practical experience while avoiding low-level interfaces, reducing the grading time and providing a level of automation necessary for scaling the course to a large number of students. In contrast to other efforts, the exploited Platform as a Service model provides the ability to quickly reuse this approach by other PDC educators without installation of the Everest platform.

Interfaces between servant processes and service classification

In this paper, a theoretical approach was developed to analyze servant processes’ characteristics in different types of services, as professional, shop and mass services. Facilitator, responsiveness, flexibility, customer focus and tend to be higher in professional services. Responsiveness and simplicity tend to be higher in mass services while only responsiveness is highlighted on service shops.

Would Better Access to Preventive Care Reduce Use of Acute Care? Evidence from a Large-Scale Not-for-Profit Intervention in Alberta

We find that participants in a large-scale not-for-profit program that lowered financial barriers to accessing preventive health services of different types and different efficacies had statistically significant hospital admissions, emergency department visits, and use of general practitioner services avoided. Although our ability to interpret our estimates as causal effects is limited by the voluntary nature of participation in the program, our study highlights the potential of improved access to cost-effective upstream preventive care through tax assistance and direct public payment to address the fiscal challenges of the downstream medical treatment system.

A Multi-objective Hierarchical Location-allocation Model for the Healthcare Network Design Considering a Referral System

This paper presents a multi-objective and multi-service location-allocation model with capacity planning to design a healthcare facilities network through considering a referral system. Therefore, a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model containing two objective functions is proposed. The first objective function is relates to minimization of total opening cost, minimization of total set up cost of different types of services and minimization of total traveled distance by patients to reach each facility. The second objective function in the model aims to minimize maximum normalized workload between opened facilities in each level. Specifying location of different facilities, allocating patients zones to family physician centers, establishing an optimal flow between different levels in the network and determining the optimal capacity for different specialized and super specialty facilities are main strategic and tactical decisions in the proposed model. In order to solve the proposed model and arrive at Pareto solutions, a primary nonlinear integer program is transformed to linearize the model and then, an augmented -constraint method is applied on numerical examples. Finally, the results obtained by sensitivity analysis on the main parameters are reported to show that the presented model can be used to design a multi-level healthcare facility network.

Nursing pain experts in German hospitals : A compilation of activity profiles and tasks

In recent years nurses have come to play aprofessional role in pain management. In Germany, the publication of the national expert standards on pain management in nursing resulted in nurses being educated to be pain resource nurses; however, since education has started the continuance and commitments of specialized pain nurses in clinical practice is basically unclear. The goal of this evaluation was to identify how pain resource nurses are involved in pain management and organizational aspects in German hospitals. Online survey of 374directors of nursing services of different types of hospitals on the assignment of nursing pain experts. Pain resource nurses are involved in pain management in 70.6% of the hospitals responding to the questionnaire. Their task profile depends on the hospital size and 42.2% of the hospitals have documented task profiles. Pain resource nurses are primarily involved in invasive pain management processes (37.1%) and in the management of pain in patients with complex pain problems after surgery (33.2%). Educative tasks are training of colleagues and implementation and conversion of the national expert standards. Of the hospitals 36.1% implemented the national expert standards for acute pain and 57% of the medium-sized hospitals have at least also implemented the national expert standards for chronic pain. The study shows afirst insight into the task profiles of pain resource nurses. The implementation of this special qualification is meaningful and seems to be well-recognized in the hospitals. The tasks of patient care are orientated to the spectrum of patients treated in the hospital. The tasks of education also show the importance for the education of colleagues.

A Lightweight End-Side User Experience Data Collection System for Quality Evaluation of Multimedia Communications

A lightweight evaluation system, which can be deployed on common user equipment in commercial mobile networks, is proposed for measuring the user experience of multimedia services. The user experience evaluation system can measure the key quality indicators of traditional and emerging services in different scenarios. In contrast to traffic models, this system models typical user behavior to construct complex scenarios of communication networks. In commercial network experiments, the proposed evaluation system achieves stable and efficient performance in complex scenarios, which consist of different types of services and typical user behaviors.

Service-Aware Multi-Resource Allocation in Software-Defined Next Generation Cellular Networks

Network slicing is one of the major solutions needed to meet the requirements of next generation cellular networks, under one common network infrastructure, in supporting multiple vertical services provided by mobile network operators. Network slicing makes one shared physical network infrastructure appear as multiple logically isolated virtual networks dedicated to different service types where each Network Slice (NS) benefits from on-demand allocated resources. Typically, the available resources distributed among NSs are correlated and one needs to allocate them judiciously in order to guarantee the service, MNO, and overall system qualities. In this paper, we consider a joint resource allocation strategy that weights the significance of the resources per a given NS by leveraging the correlation structure of different quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of the services. After defining the joint resource allocation problem including the correlation structure, we propose three novel scheduling mechanisms that allocate available network resources to the generated NSs based on different type of services with different QoS requirements. Performance of the proposed schedulers are then investigated through Monte-Carlo simulations and compared with each other as well as against a traditional max-min fairness algorithm benchmark. The results reveal that our schedulers, which have different complexities, outperform the benchmark traditional method in terms of service-based and overall satisfaction ratios, while achieving different fairness index levels.

Аутсорсинг автопарка как способ сократить издержки

[For the English abstract and full text of the article please see the attached PDF-File (English version follows Russian version)].ABSTRACT The article considers options for car fleet outsourcing. The benefits of each method are evaluated, advantages and disadvantages are compared. A brief analysis of the state of the operational leasing market in Russia is given. When comparing financial and operative or operational leasing, emphasis is placed on their ability to optimize the costs of using and maintaining the fleet in terms of its own and external management. Reform of the leasing market in Russia is considered. The definitions of such concepts as outsourcing, fleet management, operative or operational leasing are presented. The functions of fleet management are analyzed and defined. Positive and negative aspects of operative or operational leasing are presented. Features of the advantages of operative or operational leasing are singled out. The direction of operational automobile leasing in Russia has just begun to develop actively - since 2004. The analysis of development of operative or operational leasing by years is carried out. The issue is considered in what the operational lease differs from the financial one. Specific examples are offered that prove that these are completely different types of services. This is due to the fact that the task of operational lease is to provide the client with a service, financial - to finance the client. With financial leasing, it is important that a leasing company acquires property for its transfer to a specific client - in contrast to an operative or operational lease, when the lessor independently chooses the equipment and the supplier based on the availability of demand for it. According to the RAEX (Expert RA) survey, in 2017 the volume of leasing business grew by 58 % and amounted to 710 billion rubles. The main drivers of the market due to the implementation of state programs are transport segments. At the same time, thanks to deals with railway and aircraft engineering, the share of operational leasing in the new business reached 21 %. The main contribution to the development and growth of the leasing market in Russia in 2018 will be made by the automotive segment, the development of additional service programs and the client-centered approach of leasing companies. Keywords: car fleet outsourcing, fleet management, operational leasing, financial leasing, leasing market growth, leasing market reform.

Purchasing pension advisory services in Sweden – An interpretive investigation into service conceptions and supplier selection

Research on service purchasing commonly acknowledges that different types of services require different purchasing approaches. This has generated a plethora of service classifications that focus on different characteristics inherent to the service. Recently, the use to which a service is put in an organization and the organizational context have been argued to influence the way in which the service is purchased, thereby shifting attention away from inherent service characteristics. The current paper extends this line of research by focusing on the buyer's understanding of the service and its impact on the supplier selection process. Based on an interpretive, phenomenographic analysis of 32 interviews with buyers of pension and insurance advice services (PIAS) in Sweden, the current study identifies four fundamentally different ways of understanding these services and shows how different conceptions of a service give rise to different approaches to selecting suppliers and different criteria for evaluating them.

Economic Feasibility of Wireless Sensor Network-Based Service Provision in a Duopoly Setting with a Monopolist Operator.

We analyze the feasibility of providing Wireless Sensor Network-data-based services in an Internet of Things scenario from an economical point of view. The scenario has two competing service providers with their own private sensor networks, a network operator and final users. The scenario is analyzed as two games using game theory. In the first game, sensors decide to subscribe or not to the network operator to upload the collected sensing-data, based on a utility function related to the mean service time and the price charged by the operator. In the second game, users decide to subscribe or not to the sensor-data-based service of the service providers based on a Logit discrete choice model related to the quality of the data collected and the subscription price. The sinks and users subscription stages are analyzed using population games and discrete choice models, while network operator and service providers pricing stages are analyzed using optimization and Nash equilibrium concepts respectively. The model is shown feasible from an economic point of view for all the actors if there are enough interested final users and opens the possibility of developing more efficient models with different types of services.

Improving logistic efficiency of WEEE collection through dynamic scheduling using simulation modeling

The complexity of collection systems for Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in the EU is increasing, due to the latest directive that sets new collection targets and modes. The high variability and the uncertainty of reverse flows require innovative logistic approaches. One recent option for increasing efficiency and responsiveness in waste collection services, boosted by new technological solutions for waste level monitoring, is to adopt a dynamic collection scheme, where the collection frequency is not established a priori (based on a fixed plan), but it is based on the actual filling levels of waste bins. This option can allow the service provider to plan the collection service following the actual demand, resulting in a more responsive service, while improving the logistic efficiency. This paper evaluates the implementation of dynamic scheduling schemes for the collection of WEEE. A hybrid simulation model has been developed in order to support researchers and practitioners in assessing quantitative impacts of adopting dynamic scheduling in WEEE collection. Three logistic alternatives (a fixed collection schedule scheme, a pure dynamic scheme and a mixed one) have been compared in a test case based on data of an Italian municipality; collection services for different types of WEEE (i.e. large appliances and small items) have been analyzed. Results show a promising performance of dynamic schedules compared to the fixed one, revealing, for the specific test case, how a mixed solution can combine the advantages of dynamic and fixed scheduling, gaining flexibility towards customer demand while improving truck resource utilization.

Patient experiences with care across various types of mental health care: Questionnaire development, measurement invariance, and patients' reports.

To describe the development, validation, and findings of a patient experience questionnaire across 7 types of residential and ambulatory mental health care services. Thirty-five items were hypothesized to cover information, participation, therapeutic relationship, personalized care, organization and collaboration, safety, patient rights, outcomes of care, and discharge preparation and after-care. Also included were 2 overall rating items (scoring and recommending the organization). This Dutch questionnaire was applied in 79 organizations in Belgium (N patients=5,168). Exploratory structural equation modelling was conducted on a random split-half sample to examine dimensionality. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple group confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on the holdout sample to confirm dimensionality and assess measurement invariance across type of service and patient characteristics. Multilevel logistic regression models linking subscale top box scores to overall rating items were used to assess criterion validity. The hypothesized dimensionality was partly confirmed, and configural and scalar invariance were demonstrated across types of organizations and patient characteristics. Subscale scores were significantly associated with overall ratings. Process evaluation showed that participating organizations strongly support continued use of this questionnaire. This validated patient experience questionnaire supports comparison across organizations from different types of services to improve the quality of mental health care.

A New Categorization of the U.S. Economy: The Role of Supply Chain Industries in Innovation and Economic Performance

An active debate has centered on the importance of manufacturing for driving innovation in the U.S. economy. This paper proposes an alternative framework that focuses on the role of suppliers of goods and services (the “supply chain economy”) in national performance. Using the 2002 Benchmark Input- Output Accounts, we introduce a new industry categorization that separates supply chain (SC) industries (i.e., those that sell their goods and services primarily to businesses or government) from business-to-consumer (B2C) industries (i.e., those that sell primarily to consumers). We find that the supply chain economy is a distinct and large segment of the economy, with a mix of manufacturers and more importantly service providers. Supply chain industries, especially “traded” services (i.e., those that are sold across regions, like software), have higher average wages than B2C industries. The supply chain economy also has a much larger intensity of STEM jobs and generates the majority of patents. While STEM jobs are most prevalent among suppliers of traded services, patents are concentrated primarily in manufacturing suppliers. We also find that employment in the economy has been evolving from manufacturing into different types of services for the period under examination (1998–2013): SC traded services (with the highest STEM intensity and wages) experienced high growth in employment and wages; and B2C local services (with the lowest STEM intensity and wages) experienced high growth in employment but a decline in wages. Overall, our findings suggest that the subcategory of supply chain traded services is particularly important to innovation and the economy.

Pricing strategies and categories for LTE networks

Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems will provide a large number of users with various high quality wireless Internet services including but not limited to voice over IP, real-time gaming, multimedia streaming and several others. A suitable pricing policy is an important component in order to bring benefits to both the operators and the customers. In fact, through this, the operator can efficiently manage the radio resources of cellular networks. For different types of services, the operator can maintain user Quality of Service and through which, the revenue can be optimized. This article analyzes various possible LTE pricing schemes, including the one proposed, based on different criteria: network load and congestion, operator revenue, traffic differentiation and user categorization. We provide comparative graphs to highlight the pros and cons of the studied pricing strategies. We highlight the importance for the operator to move from the often used flat-rate style policies towards more dynamic pricing strategies taking into account the user and service classes.

HealthLinks: Incentivising better value chronic care in Victoria

Introduction: As the system manager for Victoria’s acute care system, the Department of Health and Human Services recognises the benefits of integrated approaches for patients with chronic and complex conditions. However, Victoria’s current hospital funding model is not particularly well suited to supporting integrated care for these patients.Health links: Chronic Care is a funding-neutral reform that aims to support Victoria’s Public Health Services in adopting approaches that better identify patients at risk of becoming frequent users and responds to their chronic care needs earlier.Description of policy context and objectives: In Victoria, activity based funding has been the preferred approach to funding public hospital services. However, the acute inpatient activity based model is often cited as a barrier to the delivery of integrated hospital-wide care for some groups of highly complex patients.Over the past decade, Victorian hospitals have put in place service responses to help reduce the risk of hospitalisation for these patients, such as those delivered through substitution and diversion programs such as the Health Independence Program. However, there has been little concurrent development of the funding models underpinning this shift in healthcare. For many complex and chronic disease patients, their journey through the hospital system is funded via many different funding streams.While discrete funding streams offer ways to account for, and cost, different types of services they can also lead to artificial boundaries being created between service streams. These funding streams lack the flexibility providers are seeking to deliver integrated care across the continuum of the patient’s journey.In order to test if it is possible to deliver better value care for these complex patients, from within existing resources, Victoria will trial the use of a capitation funding model in 2016-17.Target Population: Patients with chronic care needs who are at risk of multiple acute admissions in a 12 month period.Highlights: Using Victorian linked data (Victorian Admitted Episode Dataset and Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset) a prediction algorithm has been developed that identifies patients who are at risk of three or more admissions in the next 12 months (positive predictive value =32%). The predicted average resource utilisation of the group prescribes a capitation payment for each identified patient. Health services will build on existing, or define new, clinical and service interventions to be implemented.Transferability: The approach is being formally evaluated over a two year period with patient monitoring continuing for a further 12 months. Early observational findings will be available by November 2016.Conclusions: The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is working with a small group of Public Health Services to test if the use of a capitation funding model, based on the average acute inpatient resource utilisation of this group, will drive alternate models of care, including better integration across service streams. Ultimately the aim is to deliver better patient value from within existing acute care funding resources.

Cost-Aware Region-Level Data Placement in Multi-Tiered Parallel I/O Systems

Multi-tiered Parallel I/O systems that combine traditional HDDs with emerging SSDs mitigate the cost burden of SSDs while benefiting from their superior I/O performance. While a multi-tiered parallel I/O system is promising for data-intensive applications in high-performance (HPC) domains, placing data on each tier of the system to achieve high I/O performance remains a challenge. In this paper, we propose a cost-aware region-level (CARL) data placement scheme in multi-tiered parallel I/O systems. CARL divides a large file into several small regions, and then places regions on different types of servers based on region access costs. CARL includes a static policy S-CARL and a dynamic policy D-CARL. For applications whose I/O access patterns are completely known, S-CARL calculates the region costs within the entire workload duration, and uses a static data placement scheme to selectively place regions on the proper servers. To adapt to applications whose access patterns are unknown in advance, D-CARL uses a dynamic data placement scheme which migrates data among different servers within each time window. We have implemented CARL under MPI-IO library and OrangeFS parallel file system environment. Our evaluation with representative benchmarks and an application shows that CARL is both feasible and able to improve I/O performance significantly.

Workload Consolidation for Cloud Data Centers with Guaranteed QoS Using Request Reneging

Cloud data centers are widely employed to offer reliable cloud services. However, low resource utilization and high power consumption have been great challenges for cloud providers. Moreover, the rapid increase in demand for affordable cloud services magnifies the obstacles for proficient resource management policies. In this paper, we investigate how to improve resource utilization and power consumption in cloud data centers when delivering services with statistically guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). We assume that the service provider hosts different types of services, each of which has request classes with different QoS requirements. Different from the traditional approaches that distribute workloads with different QoS levels on different Virtual Machines (VMs), we introduce an approach to pack requests of the same service type, even with different QoS requirements, into the same VM, and to remove potential failure requests in time to improve resource usage and energy cost. We formally prove that our algorithm can statistically guarantee QoS conditions in terms of deadline miss ratios. We develop a cloud prototype to empirically validate our proposed methods and algorithm. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach can significantly outperform other traditional approaches in terms of QoS guarantees, power consumption, resource demand and electricity cost.

Trading and Ordering Patterns of Market Participants in High Frequency Trading Environment - Empirical Study in the Japanese Stock Market

In this study, we investigate ordering patterns of different types of market participants in Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) by examining order records of the listed stocks. Firstly, we categorize the virtual servers in the trading system of TSE, each of which is linked to a single trading participant, by the ratio of cancellation and execution in the order placement as well as the number of executions at the opening of the afternoon session. Then, we analyze ordering patterns of the servers in the categories in short intervals for the top 10 highest trading volume stocks. By classifying the intervals into four cases by returns, we observe how different types of market participants submit or execute orders in the market situations. Moreover, we investigate the shares of the executed volumes for the different types of servers in the swings and roundabouts of the Nikkei 225 index, which were observed in July, August, and September in 2015. The main findings of this study are as follows: Server type A, which supposedly includes non-market making proprietary traders with high-speed algorithmic strategies, executes and places orders along with the direction of the market. The shares of the execution and order volumes along with the market direction increase when the stock price moves sharply. Server type B, which presumably includes servers employing a market making strategy with high cancellation and low execution ratio, shifts its market making price ranges in the rapid price movements. We observe that passive servers in Server type B have a large share and buy at low levels in the price falls. Also, Server type B, as well as Server type A, makes profit in the price falling days and particularly, the aggressive servers in the server type make most of the profit. Server type C, which is assumed to include servers receiving orders from small investors, constantly has a large share of execution and order volume.