Search results for: clinical decision support system

Authors: Esabelle Lo Yan Yam, Pheak Chhoun, Sovannary Tuot, Emily Lancsar, Siyan Yi

Abstract:

Persons living with HIV (PLHIV) need lifelong antiretroviral treatment (ART) to keep their viral load suppressed to an undetectable level, maintain a healthy immune system, and reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to others. However, many factors affect PLHIV's adherence to ART, including access to antiretrovirals (ARV), stigma, lack of social support, and the burden of seeking lifelong care. Community-based care has been shown to be instrumental in the experience of PLHIV in many countries, including Cambodia. In this study based in Cambodia, a community-based ART delivery (CAD) intervention involving community action workers (CAWs) who are PLHIVs was introduced. These workers collect pre-packaged ARVs from the ART clinics and dispense them to PLHIVs in the communities. The quasi-experimental study involved approximately 2000 stable PLHIV in the intervention arm and another 2000 PLHIV in the control arm (receiving usual care). A cost-effectiveness analysis is currently conducted to complement the clinical effectiveness of the CAD intervention on the care continuum and treatment outcomes for stable PLHIV, as well as the operational effectiveness in increasing the efficiency of the ART clinics and the health system. The analysis will consider health system and societal perspectives based on primary outcomes, including retention in care, viral load suppression, and adherence to ART. Additionally, a consultation with the National Centre for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology, and STD under the Cambodia Ministry of Health will be done to discuss the conduct of a budget impact analysis that can quantify the financial impact on the government's budget when adopting the CAD intervention at the provincial and national levels. The budget impact analysis will take into consideration various scaling-up scenarios for the interventions in the country. The research will assess the cost-effectiveness of the CAD intervention to support national stakeholders in Cambodia to make an informed decision on the adoption and scaling up of the intervention in Cambodia. The results are currently being analyzed and will be available at the time of the conference.

Keywords: Cambodia, community intervention, economic evaluation, global health, HIV/AIDs, implementation research

Procedia PDF Downloads 24

Authors: Johannes Gantner, Michael Held, Matthias Fischer

Abstract:

The refurbishment of the building stock in terms of energy supply and efficiency is one of the major challenges of the German turnaround in energy policy. As the building sector accounts for 40% of Germany’s total energy demand, additional insulation is key for energy efficient refurbished buildings. Nevertheless the energetic benefits often the environmental and economic performances of insulation materials are questioned. The methods Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as well as Life Cycle Costing (LCC) can form the standardized basis for answering this doubts and more and more become important for material producers due efforts such as Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) or Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). Due to increasing use of LCA and LCC information for decision support the robustness and resilience of the results become crucial especially for support of decision and policy makers. LCA and LCC results are based on respective models which depend on technical parameters like efficiencies, material and energy demand, product output, etc.. Nevertheless, the influence of parameter uncertainties on lifecycle results are usually not considered or just studied superficially. Anyhow the effect of parameter uncertainties cannot be neglected. Based on the example of an exterior wall the overall lifecycle results are varying by a magnitude of more than three. As a result simple best case worst case analyses used in practice are not sufficient. These analyses allow for a first rude view on the results but are not taking effects into account such as error propagation. Thereby LCA practitioners cannot provide further guidance for decision makers. Probabilistic analyses enable LCA practitioners to gain deeper understanding of the LCA and LCC results and provide a better decision support. Within this study, the environmental and economic impacts of an exterior wall system over its whole lifecycle are illustrated, and the effect of different uncertainty analysis on the interpretation in terms of resilience and robustness are shown. Hereby the approaches of error propagation and Monte Carlo Simulations are applied and combined with statistical methods in order to allow for a deeper understanding and interpretation. All in all this study emphasis the need for a deeper and more detailed probabilistic evaluation based on statistical methods. Just by this, misleading interpretations can be avoided, and the results can be used for resilient and robust decisions.

Keywords: uncertainty, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, Monte Carlo simulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 259

Authors: Assem El-Ansary

Abstract:

This paper illustrates the event-oriented Behavioral Pattern Analysis (BPA) modeling approach using the Healthcare Multi-Agent System. The Event defined in BPA is a real-life conceptual entity that is unrelated to any implementation. The major contributions of this research are: The Behavioral Pattern Analysis (BPA) modeling methodology. The development of an interactive software tool (DECISION), which is based on a combination of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the ELECTRE Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods.

Keywords: analysis, modeling methodology, software modeling, event-oriented, behavioral pattern, use cases, Healthcare Multi-Agent System

Procedia PDF Downloads 520

Authors: Ibrahim Cil, Onur Kurtcu, H. Ibrahim Demir, Furkan Yener, Yusuf. S. Turkan, Muharrem Unver, Ramazan Evren

Abstract:

Fuzzy AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method is decision-making way at the end of integrating the current AHP method with fuzzy structure. In this study, the processes of production planning, inventory management and purchasing department of a system were analysed and were requested to decide the performance criteria of each area. At this point, the current work processes were analysed by various decision-makers and comparing each criteria by giving points according to 1-9 scale were completed. The criteria were listed in order to their weights by using Fuzzy AHP approach and top three performance criteria of each department were determined. After that, the performance criteria of supply chain consisting of three departments were asked to determine. The processes of each department were compared by decision-makers at the point of building the supply chain performance system and getting the performance criteria. According to the results, the criteria of performance system of supply chain by using Fuzzy AHP were determined for which will be used in the supply chain performance system in the future.

Keywords: AHP, fuzzy, performance evaluation, supply chain

Procedia PDF Downloads 304

Authors: Giuseppina Settanni, Antonio Panarese, Raffaele Vaira, Maurizio Galiano

Abstract:

Nowdays, artificial intelligence is used successfully in academia and industry for its ability to learn from a large amount of data. In particular, in recent years the use of machine learning algorithms in the field of e-commerce has spread worldwide. In this research study, a prototype software platform was designed and implemented in order to suggest to users the most suitable products for their needs. The platform includes a chatbot and a recommender system based on artificial intelligence algorithms that provide suggestions and decision support to the customer. The recommendation systems perform the important function of automatically filtering and personalizing information, thus allowing to manage with the IT overload to which the user is exposed on a daily basis. Recently, international research has experimented with the use of machine learning technologies with the aim to increase the potential of traditional recommendation systems. Specifically, support vector machine algorithms have been implemented combined with natural language processing techniques that allow the user to interact with the system, express their requests and receive suggestions. The interested user can access the web platform on the internet using a computer, tablet or mobile phone, register, provide the necessary information and view the products that the system deems them most appropriate. The platform also integrates a dashboard that allows the use of the various functions, which the platform is equipped with, in an intuitive and simple way. Artificial intelligence algorithms have been implemented and trained on historical data collected from user browsing. Finally, the testing phase allowed to validate the implemented model, which will be further tested by letting customers use it.

Keywords: machine learning, recommender system, software platform, support vector machine

Procedia PDF Downloads 109

Authors: Hongyu Chen, Li Jiang

Abstract:

Ubiquitous anomalies endanger the security of our system con- stantly. They may bring irreversible damages to the system and cause leakage of privacy. Thus, it is of vital importance to promptly detect these anomalies. Traditional supervised methods such as Decision Trees and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are used to classify normality and abnormality. However, in some case, the abnormal status are largely rarer than normal status, which leads to decision bias of these methods. Generative adversarial network (GAN) has been proposed to handle the case. With its strong generative ability, it only needs to learn the distribution of normal status, and identify the abnormal status through the gap between it and the learned distribution. Nevertheless, existing GAN-based models are not suitable to process data with discrete values, leading to immense degradation of detection performance. To cope with the discrete features, in this paper, we propose an efficient GAN-based model with specifically-designed loss function. Experiment results show that our model outperforms state-of-the-art models on discrete dataset and remarkably reduce the overhead.

Keywords: GAN, discrete feature, Wasserstein distance, multiple intermediate layers

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Stephan Printz, Kristina Lahl, René Vossen, Sabina Jeschke

Abstract:

Strategic investment decisions are characterized by high innovation potential and long-term effects on the competitiveness of enterprises. Due to the uncertainty and risks involved in this complex decision making process, the need arises for well-structured support activities. A method that considers cost and the long-term added value is the cost-benefit effectiveness estimation. One of those methods is the “profitability estimation focused on benefits – PEFB”-method developed at the Institute of Management Cybernetics at RWTH Aachen University. The method copes with the challenges associated with strategic investment decisions by integrating long-term non-monetary aspects whilst also mapping the chronological sequence of an investment within the organization’s target system. Thus, this method is characterized as a holistic approach for the evaluation of costs and benefits of an investment. This participation-oriented method was applied to business environments in many workshops. The results of the workshops are a library of more than 96 cost aspects, as well as 122 benefit aspects. These aspects are preprocessed and comparatively analyzed with regards to their alignment to a series of risk levels. For the first time, an accumulation and a distribution of cost and benefit aspects regarding their impact and probability of occurrence are given. The results give evidence that the PEFB-method combines precise measures of financial accounting with the incorporation of benefits. Finally, the results constitute the basics for using information technology and data science for decision support when applying within the PEFB-method.

Keywords: cost-benefit analysis, multi-criteria decision, profitability estimation focused on benefits, risk and uncertainty analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 412

Authors: Helen Pushkarskaya, David Tolin, Lital Ruderman, Ariel Kirshenbaum, J. MacLaren Kelly, Christopher Pittenger, Ifat Levy

Abstract:

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) produces profound morbidity. Difficulties with decision making and intolerance of uncertainty are prominent clinical features of OCD. The nature and etiology of these deficits are poorly understood. We used a well-validated choice task, grounded in behavioral economic theory, to investigate differences in valuation and value-based choice during decision making under uncertainty in 20 unmedicated participants with OCD and 20 matched healthy controls. Participants’ choices were used to assess individual decision-making characteristics. Compared to controls, individuals with OCD were less consistent in their choices and less able to identify options that were unambiguously preferable. These differences correlated with symptom severity. OCD participants did not differ from controls in how they valued uncertain options when outcome probabilities were known (risk) but were more likely than controls to avoid uncertain options when these probabilities were imprecisely specified (ambiguity). These results suggest that the underlying neural mechanisms of valuation and value-based choices during decision-making are abnormal in OCD. Individuals with OCD show elevated intolerance of uncertainty, but only when outcome probabilities are themselves uncertain. Future research focused on the neural valuation network, which is implicated in value-based computations, may provide new neurocognitive insights into the pathophysiology of OCD. Deficits in decision-making processes may represent a target for therapeutic intervention.

Keywords: obsessive compulsive disorder, decision-making, uncertainty intolerance, risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, valuation

Procedia PDF Downloads 586

Authors: Rivindu Nethmin Bandara Menik Hitihamy Mudiyanselage, Matthias Hank Haeusler, Ben Doherty

Abstract:

Investors and clients in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industry find it difficult to understand complex datasets and reports with little to no graphic representation. The stakeholders examined in this paper include designers, design clients and end-users. Communicating embodied carbon information graphically and concisely can aid with decision support early in a building's life cycle. It is essential to create a common visualisation approach as the level of knowledge about embodied carbon varies between stakeholders. The tool, designed in conjunction with Bates Smart, condenses Tally Life Cycle Assessment data to a carbon hot-spotting visualisation, highlighting the sections with the highest amounts of embodied carbon. This allows stakeholders at every stage of a given project to have a better understanding of the carbon implications with minimal effort. It further allows stakeholders to differentiate building elements by their carbon values, which enables the evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of the selected materials at an early stage. To examine and build a decision-support tool, an action-design research methodology of cycles of iterations was used along with precedents of embodied carbon visualising tools. Accordingly, the importance of visualisation and Building Information Modelling are also explored to understand the best format for relaying these results.

Keywords: embodied carbon, visualisation, summarisation, data filtering, early-stage decision-making, materiality

Procedia PDF Downloads 53

Authors: Yih-Jer Wu, Ling-Lang Huang

Abstract:

Shared decision-making (SDM) is a critical aspect of determining optimal medical strategies. However, current patient decision aids (PDAs) often prioritize evidence-based discussions over value-based considerations. Despite its significance, there is limited research addressing the 'value gap' between patients and healthcare providers. To address this gap, we developed the 'Patient-Doctor Relationship Questionnaire,' consisting of 12 questions. To explore potential variations in the patient-doctor value gap across different medical specialties, we conducted interviews with physicians, surgeons, and their respective patients, utilizing the questionnaire. Between 2020 and 2022, we interviewed a total of 144 patients and 19 doctors. Among the 12 questions, physicians demonstrated significant patient-doctor value gaps in 5 questions, while surgeons in 3 questions. Only one question turned out significant gaps in both physicians and surgeons. When asking both doctors and their patients to choose one from the following 6 answers (1. No issue significant; 2. Not knowing how to make a medical decision; 3. Not confident in the doctor’s clinical judgment; 4. Not knowing how to articulate one’s own condition; 5. Unable to afford medical expenses; 6. Not understanding what doctors explain) in response to the question “what the most significant issue is in the medical consultation”, over 50% of doctors chose “Not knowing how to make a medical decision” (physicians vs. patients, 50% vs. 11%, p=0.046; surgeon vs. patients, 83% vs. 29%, p=0.001), while significantly more patients chose “No issue significant” (10% vs. 52%, p=0.002; 0% vs. 33%, p<0.001, respectively). Our findings indicate that value gaps do exist between patients and doctors and that most patients in Taiwan "fully trust" their doctors' recommendations for medical decisions. However, when treatment outcomes are far from ideal, this overinflated "trust" may turn into frustration, which could become the catalyst for medical disputes. Doctors should spend more time having more effective communication with their patients, particularly regarding potentially dissatisfactory treatment outcomes. This study underscores the substantial variability in the patient-doctor value gap, often overlooked in SDM. Patients from different clinical backgrounds may hold values distinct from those of their healthcare providers. Bridging this value gap is imperative for achieving genuine and effective SDM.

Keywords: share-decision making, value gaps, communication, doctor-patient relationship

Procedia PDF Downloads 17

Authors: Doyin Afolabi, Phillip Adewole, Oladipupo Sennaike

Abstract:

Most well-known classifiers, including the decision tree algorithm, can make predictions on balanced datasets efficiently. However, the decision tree algorithm tends to be biased towards imbalanced datasets because of the skewness of the distribution of such datasets. To overcome this problem, this study proposes a weighted decision tree algorithm that aims to remove the bias toward the majority class and prevents the reduction of majority observations in imbalance datasets classification. The proposed weighted decision tree algorithm was tested on three imbalanced datasets- cancer dataset, german credit dataset, and banknote dataset. The specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy metrics were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed decision tree algorithm on the datasets. The evaluation results show that for some of the weights of our proposed decision tree, the specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy metrics gave better results compared to that of the ID3 decision tree and decision tree induced with minority entropy for all three datasets.

Keywords: data mining, decision tree, classification, imbalance dataset

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Sri Widati, Ira Nurmala

Abstract:

The Se’i Tradition was considered to contribute highly to the high maternal mortality rate in South Amanuban, East Nusa Tenggara. This tradition is still preserved due to the social support that has influenced the decision to carry out the Se’i to pregnant women and post-partum women. The purpose of this study is to analyze this social support towards the Se’i Tradition on pregnant women in East Nusa Tenggara. This research was an explorative study with in-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions (FGD) in collecting the data. This study showed that emotional support towards Se’i was commonly given by families, specifically by the mother-in laws. Instrumental support was shown by the husbands and the traditional midwives who helped delivered the babies. Informational support was found on the pregnant women and their mother-in laws. Appraisal support was given by all the neighbors and relatives of the pregnant women by telling how comfortable it was to go through this tradition which eventually affected those women to carry it out themselves. The Se’i Tradition is still carried out and mostly supported by the relatives of the pregnant women. The first recommendation of this study is to suggest people to only follow the suggestions from the local health staff to give birth in the local health centers and not to do the tradition anymore. The second recommendation is to urge the government to give support in the form of transportation facilities for pregnant women to reach the local health staff.

Keywords: the Se’i tradition, social support, pregnant women, maternal mortality, post-partum women

Procedia PDF Downloads 505

Authors: Onder Yakut, Serdar Solak, Emine Dogru Bolat

Abstract:

Measuring the Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is an essential process for the diagnosis of the heart diseases. The ECG signal has the information of the degree of how much the heart performs its functions. In medical diagnosis and treatment systems, Decision Support Systems processing the ECG signal are being developed for the use of clinicians while medical examination. In this study, a modular wireless ECG (WECG) measuring and recording system using a single board computer and e-Health sensor platform is developed. In this designed modular system, after the ECG signal is taken from the body surface by the electrodes first, it is filtered and converted to digital form. Then, it is recorded to the health database using Wi-Fi communication technology. The real time access of the ECG data is provided through the internet utilizing the developed web interface.

Keywords: ECG, e-health sensor shield, Raspberry Pi, wiFi technology

Procedia PDF Downloads 360

Authors: Benjamas Penboon, Zachary Zimmer, Aree Jampaklay

Abstract:

Cambodia is a country where labor migration has been consistently high. Coupled with advancing labor opportunities in urban areas, a function partly of globalization, this is resulting in massive migration out of rural areas. This is particularly true in Cambodia where there are high migration and a very large proportion of adult children living some distant from their parents. This paper explores characteristics associated with migrant providing support to parents in rural Cambodia. With reference to perspectives of family altruism and solidarity, this analysis particularly focusses on how a series of variables representing family integration and residential location associates with intergenerational monetary and instrumental support from migrants. The study hypothesizes that migrants are more likely to provide support when parents are in need, and there are no alternative means of support. Data come from The Rural Household Survey (N=3,713), part of the 2011 Cambodian Rural Urban Migration Project (CRUMP). Multilevel multinomial models indicate international migrants are likely to give money, while internal migrants are likely to provide both money and instrumental support, especially when migrants have no sibling and their parent in poor health status. In addition, employed migrants are two times providing monetary compared to those unemployed. Findings elucidate the decision to which and why support occurs more often when no other source of support exists and also depends on the ability to provide of migrants themselves.

Keywords: migration, left-behind parent, intergenerational relations, support, rural, Cambodia

Procedia PDF Downloads 141

Authors: I. Khutsishvili, G. Sirbiladze, B. Ghvaberidze

Abstract:

This work proposes a fuzzy methodology to support the investment decisions. While choosing among competitive investment projects, the methodology makes ranking of projects using the new aggregation OWA operator – AsPOWA, presented in the environment of possibility uncertainty. For numerical evaluation of the weighting vector associated with the AsPOWA operator the mathematical programming problem is constructed. On the basis of the AsPOWA operator the projects’ group ranking maximum criteria is constructed. The methodology also allows making the most profitable investments into several of the project using the method developed by the authors for discrete possibilistic bicriteria problems. The article provides an example of the investment decision-making that explains the work of the proposed methodology.

Keywords: expert evaluations, investment decision making, OWA operator, possibility uncertainty

Procedia PDF Downloads 530

Authors: Sayed Hadi Sadeghi

Abstract:

This research study examines the current state of support services for e-network practice in an Australian and an American university. It identifies information that will be of assistance to Australian and American universities to improve their existing online programs. The study investigated the two universities using a quantitative methodological approach. Participants were students, lecturers and admins of universities engaged with online courses and learning management systems. The support services for e-network practice variables, namely academic support services, administrative support and technical support, were investigated for e-practice. Evaluations of e-network support service and its sub factors were above average and excellent in both countries, although the American admins and lecturers tended to evaluate this factor higher than others did. Support practice was evaluated higher by all participants of an American university than by Australians. One explanation for the results may be that most suppliers of the Australian university e-learning system were from eastern Asian cultural backgrounds with a western networking support perspective about e-learning.

Keywords: support services, e-Network practice, Australian universities, United States universities

Procedia PDF Downloads 137

Authors: Cate MacMillan, Nicholas J. Stevens, Johanna Rosier, Steven Boyd

Abstract:

Choosing where to live is an important decision for anybody, however, this decision is more complex if you are an adult with intellectual disability. Our research asked adults with intellectual disability, parents and carers and disability, housing and built environment decision makers what they considered important in deciding where to live. If medical advances continue to improve the longevity of adults with intellectual disability, many of these adults will outlive their parents. With appropriate community support, and in appropriately designed neighbourhoods, many will be able to live independently. Our research suggests that the key to achieving independent living as an adult with intellectual disability is not so much about the house but the type of neighbourhood and its design. This paper presents the results of interviews and details a practical approach which will better inform urban development decision-makers in establishing safe, inclusive and accessible neighbourhood design.

Keywords: inclusion, independent living, intellectual disability, neighbourhoods, systems thinking, urban design and planning

Procedia PDF Downloads 328

Authors: Karina Zaccari, Ernesto Cordeiro Marujo

Abstract:

This paper presents a Machine Learning (ML) approach to support Meningitis diagnosis in patients at a children’s hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The aim is to use ML techniques to reduce the use of invasive procedures, such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collection, as much as possible. In this study, we focus on predicting the probability of Meningitis given the results of a blood and urine laboratory tests, together with the analysis of pain or other complaints from the patient. We tested a number of different ML algorithms, including: Adaptative Boosting (AdaBoost), Decision Tree, Gradient Boosting, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Logistic Regression, Random Forest and Support Vector Machines (SVM). Decision Tree algorithm performed best, with 94.56% and 96.18% accuracy for training and testing data, respectively. These results represent a significant aid to doctors in diagnosing Meningitis as early as possible and in preventing expensive and painful procedures on some children.

Keywords: machine learning, medical diagnosis, meningitis detection, pediatric research

Procedia PDF Downloads 120

Authors: Tahani Salman Alangari

Abstract:

Student success can be impacted by internal factors such as their emotional well-being and external factors such as organizational support and instructional support in the classroom. This study is to identify at least one factor that forecasts student engagement. It is a cross-sectional, conducted on 6206 teachers and encompassed three years of data collection and observations of math instruction in approximately 50 schools and 300 classrooms. A multiple linear regression revealed that a model predicting student engagement from emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support was significant. Four linear regression models were tested using hierarchical regression to examine the effects of independent variables: emotional support was the highest predictor of student engagement while instructional support was the lowest.

Keywords: student engagement, emotional support, organizational support, instructional support, well-being

Procedia PDF Downloads 51

Authors: Byungchae Kim, Jiwoo Nam

Abstract:

Aging of weapon systems can cause the failure and degeneration of components which results in increase of operating and support costs. However, whether this aging effect is significantly strong and it influences a lot on national defense spending due to the rapid increase in operating and support (O&S) costs is questionable. To figure out this, we conduct a literature review analyzing the aging effect of US weapon systems. We also conduct an empirical research using a maintenance database of Korean weapon systems, Defense Logistics Integrated Information System (DAIIS). We run regression of various types of O&S cost on weapon system age to investigate the statistical significance of aging effect and use generalized linear model to find relations between the failure of different priced components and the age. Our major finding is although aging effect exists, its impacts on weapon system cost seem to be not too large considering several characteristics of O&S cost elements not relying on the age.

Keywords: O&S cost, aging effect, weapon system, GLM

Procedia PDF Downloads 108

Authors: Mohamed Abdalla Elamein Boshara, Peter Charles Woods, Nour Eldin Mohamed Elshaiekh

Abstract:

Knowledge Management has become very important for Disaster Management response and planning. This paper proposes the implementation of a Knowledge Management System with a sustainable data collection mechanism for reliable and timely information management to support decision makers in making the right decisions in the timely manner.

Keywords: knowledge management, disaster management, incident tracking, web application

Procedia PDF Downloads 746

Authors: Mladen Dragičević, Mirjana Pejić Bach, Vanja Šimičević

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to develop models that would enable predicting student success. These models could improve allocation of students among colleges and optimize the newly introduced model of government subsidies for higher education. For the purpose of collecting data, an anonymous survey was carried out in the last year of undergraduate degree student population using random sampling method. Decision trees were created of which two have been chosen that were most successful in predicting student success based on two criteria: Grade Point Average (GPA) and time that a student needs to finish the undergraduate program (time-to-degree). Decision trees have been shown as a good method of classification student success and they could be even more improved by increasing survey sample and developing specialized decision trees for each type of college. These types of methods have a big potential for use in decision support systems.

Keywords: data mining, knowledge discovery in databases, prediction models, student success

Procedia PDF Downloads 382

Authors: Cristian Matti, Valerie Fowles, Eva Enyedi, Piotr Pogorzelski

Abstract:

The system mapping process can be defined as a knowledge service where a team of facilitators, experts and practitioners facilitate a guided conversation, enable the exchange of information and support an iterative curation process. System mapping processes rely on science-based tools to introduce and simplify a variety of components and concepts of socio-technical systems through metaphors while facilitating an interactive dialogue process to enable the design of co-created maps. System maps work then as “artifacts” to provide information and focus the conversation into specific areas around the defined challenge and related decision-making process. Knowledge management facilitates the curation of that data gathered during the system mapping sessions through practices of documentation and subsequent knowledge co-production for which common practices from data science are applied to identify new patterns, hidden insights, recurrent loops and unexpected elements. This study presents empirical evidence on the application of these techniques to explore mechanisms by which visual tools provide guiding principles to portray system components, key variables and types of data through the lens of climate change. In addition, data science facilitates the structuring of elements that allow the analysis of layers of information through affinity and clustering analysis and, therefore, develop simple indicators for supporting the decision-making process. This paper addresses methodological and empirical elements on the horizontal learning process that integrate system mapping through visual tools, interpretation, cognitive transformation and analysis. The process is designed to introduce practitioners to simple iterative and inclusive processes that create actionable knowledge and enable a shared understanding of the system in which they are embedded.

Keywords: indicators, knowledge management, system mapping, visual tools

Procedia PDF Downloads 161

Authors: Peyman Rezaei Hachesu, Vahideh Zareh Gavgani, Zahra Salahzadeh

Abstract:

To survey the attitudes, awareness, and practice of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM), and to determine the barriers that influence apply’ EBM in therapeutic process among clinical residents in Iran.We conducted a cross sectional survey during September to December 2012 at the teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences among 79 clinical residents from different medical specialties. A valid and reliable questionnaire consisted of five sections and 27 statements were used in this research. We applied Spearman and Mann Whitney test for correlation between variables. Findings showed that the knowledge of residents about EBM is low. Their attitude towards EBM was positive but their knowledge and skills in regard with the evidence based medical information resources were mostly limited to PubMed and Google scholar. The main barrier was the lack of enough time to practicing EBM. There was no significant correlation between residency grade and familiarity and use of electronic EBM resources (Spearman, P = 0.138). Integration of training approaches like journal clubs or workshops with clinical practice is suggested.

Keywords: evidence-based medicine, clinical residents, decision-making, attitude, questionnaire

Procedia PDF Downloads 349

Authors: Harleen Kaur, Deepika Jindal Singla

Abstract:

Buying decision making is a complicated process, in which consumer’s decision is under the impact of others. The buying decision making is directed in a way that they have to act as customers in the society. Media and family are key socialising agents for adolescents’. Moreover, changes in the socio-cultural environment in India necessitate that adolescents’ influence in family’s buying decision-making should be investigated. In comparison to Western society, Indian is quite different, when compared in terms of family composition and structure, behaviour, values and norms which effect adolescents’ buying decision-making.

Keywords: adolescents, buying behavior, Indian urban families, consumer socialization

Procedia PDF Downloads 442

Authors: Renjith George, Preethy Mary Donald

Abstract:

Use of internet sources to retrieve health care related information among health care professionals has increased tremendously as the accessibility to internet is made easier through smart phones and tablets. Though there are huge data available at a finger touch, it is doubtful whether all the sources providing health care information adhere to evidence based practice. The objective of this survey was to study the prevalence of use of internet sources to get health care information, to assess the mind-set towards the authenticity of health care information available via internet sources and to study the awareness about evidence based practice in health care among medical and dental students in Melaka-Manipal Medical College. The survey was proposed as there is limited number of studies reported in the literature and this is the first of its kind in Malaysia. A cross sectional survey was conducted among the medical and dental students of Melaka-Manipal Medical College. A total of 521 students including medical and dental students in their clinical years of undergraduate study participated in the survey. A questionnaire consisting of 14 questions were constructed based on data available from the published literature and focused group discussion and was pre-tested for validation. Data analysis was done using SPSS. The statistical analysis of the results of the survey proved that the use of internet resources for health care information are equally preferred over the conventional resources among health care students. Though majority of the participants verify the authenticity of information from internet sources, there was considerable percentage of candidates who feels that all the information from the internet can be utilised for clinical decision making or were not aware about the need of verification of authenticity of such information. 63.7 % of the participants rely on evidence based practice in health care for clinical decision making while 34.2 % were not aware about it. A minority of 2.1% did not agree with the concept of evidence based practice. The observations of the survey reveals the increasing use of internet resources for health care information among health care students. The results warrants the need to move towards evidence based practice in health care as all health care information available online may not be reliable. The health care person should be judicious while utilising the information from such resources for clinical decision making.

Keywords: authenticity, evidence based practice, health care information, internet

Procedia PDF Downloads 417

Authors: Mehmet Bulent Topkaya, Mustafa Yildirim

Abstract:

Wastewater treatment systems are designed and used to minimize adverse impacts of the wastewater on the environment before discharging. Various treatment options for wastewater treatment have been developed, and each of them has different performance characteristics and environmental impacts (e.g. material and land usage, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emission, water and soil emission) during construction, operation or maintenance phases. Assessing the environmental impacts during these phases are essential for the overall evaluation of the treatment systems. In this study, wastewater treatment options, such as vegetated land treatment, constructed wetland, rotating biological contactor, conventional activated sludge treatment, membrane bioreactor, extended aeration and stabilization pond are evaluated. The comparison of the environmental impacts is conducted under the assumption that the effluents will be discharged to sensitive and less sensitive areas respectively. The environmental impacts of each alternative are evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. For this purpose, data related to energy usage, land requirement, raw material consumption, and released emissions from the life phases were collected with inventory studies based on field studies and literature. The environmental impacts were assessed by using SimaPro 7.1 LCA software. As the scale of the LCA results is global, an MS-Excel based decision support tool that includes the LCA result is developed in order to meet also the local demands. Using this tool, it is possible to assign weight factors on the LCA results according to local conditions by using Analytical Hierarchy Process and finally the most environmentally appropriate treatment option can be selected.

Keywords: analytical hierarchy process, decision support system, life cycle assessment, wastewater treatment

Procedia PDF Downloads 272

Authors: Rikson Gultom

Abstract:

Hate Speech and Abusive language on social media is difficult to detect, usually, it is detected after it becomes viral in cyberspace, of course, it is too late for prevention. An early detection system that has a fairly good accuracy is needed so that it can reduce conflicts that occur in society caused by postings on social media that attack individuals, groups, and governments in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to find an early detection model on Twitter social media using machine learning that has high accuracy from several machine learning methods studied. In this study, the support vector machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes (NB), and Random Forest Decision Tree (RFDT) methods were compared with the Support Vector machine with genetic algorithm (SVM-GA), Nave Bayes with genetic algorithm (NB-GA), and Random Forest Decision Tree with Genetic Algorithm (RFDT-GA). The study produced a comparison table for the accuracy of the hate speech and abusive language detection model, and presented it in the form of a graph of the accuracy of the six algorithms developed based on the Indonesian-language Twitter dataset, and concluded the best model with the highest accuracy.

Keywords: abusive language, hate speech, machine learning, optimization, social media

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Ivana Bulog

Abstract:

Decision making is a vital part of the business world and any other field of human endeavor. Which way a business organization will take, and where that way will lead it, depends on broad range of decisions made by managers in the managerial structure. Strategic decisions are of the greatest importance for organizational success. Although much empirical research has been done trying to describe and explain its nature and effectiveness, knowledge about strategic decision making is still incomplete. This paper explores the nature of strategic decision making in particular setting - in Croatian companies. The main focus of this research is on the style that decision makers on strategic management level are following when making decisions of life importance for their companies. Two main decision making style that explain the way decision maker collects and processes available information and performs all the activities in strategic decision making process were empirical tested: rational and intuitive one. Besides analyzing their existence on strategic management level in Croatian companies, their effectiveness is analyzed as well. Results showed that decision makers at strategic management level are following both styles somewhat equally in order to function effectively, and that intuitive style is more effective when considering decisions outcomes.

Keywords: decision making style, decision making effectiveness, strategic decisions, management sciences

Procedia PDF Downloads 348

Authors: Eva Štěpánková

Abstract:

The decision-making process is theoretically clearly defined. Generally, it includes the problem identification and analysis, data gathering, goals and criteria setting, alternatives development and optimal alternative choice and its implementation. In practice however, various modifications of the theoretical decision-making process can occur. The managers can consider some of the phases to be too complicated or unfeasible and thus they do not carry them out and conversely some of the steps can be overestimated. The aim of the paper is to reveal and characterize the perception of the individual phases of decision-making process by the managers. The research is concerned with managers in the military environment–commanders. Quantitative survey is focused cross-sectionally in the individual levels of management of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. On the total number of 135 respondents the analysis focuses on which of the decision-making process phases are problematic or not carried out in practice and which are again perceived to be the easiest. Then it is examined the reasons of the findings.

Keywords: decision making, decision making process, decision problems, concrete organization

Procedia PDF Downloads 438