Controlling the extrudate swell in melt extrusion additive manufacturing of 3D scaffolds: a designed experiment.

Tissue engineering using three-dimensional porous scaffolds has shown promise for the restoration of normal function in injured and diseased tissues and organs. Rigorous control over scaffold architecture in melt extrusion additive manufacturing is highly restricted mainly due to pronounced variations in the deposited strand diameter upon any variations in process conditions and polymer viscoelasticity. We have designed an I-optimal, split-plot experiment to study the extrudate swell in melt extrusion additive manufacturing and to control the scaffold architecture.

How can healthcare standards be standardised?

International travel, medical tourism and trade have created a demand for reliable assessment of healthcare provision across borders, and for information which is accessible to patients, insurers and referring institutions. External assessment schemes for healthcare providers may be clustered into three types: statutory regulation and institutional licensing, International Standardization Organisation certification, and voluntary systems such as peer review and healthcare accreditation. Increasing complexity of healthcare provision, pressures for public accountability and expectations of professional self-governance place a burden on the inspectors and the inspected.

The effect of certification and accreditation on quality management in 4 clinical services in 73 European hospitals.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between ISO 9001 certification, healthcare accreditation and quality management in European hospitals.

Design: A mixed method multi-level cross-sectional design in seven countries. External teams assessed clinical services on the use of quality management systems, illustrated by four clinical pathways.

Evidence-based organization and patient safety strategies in European hospitals.

Objective: To explore how European hospitals have implemented patient safety strategies (PSS) and evidence-based organization of care pathway (EBOP) recommendations and examine the extent to which implementation varies between countries and hospitals.

Design: Mixed-method multilevel cross-sectional design in seven countries as part of the European Union-funded project 'Deepening our Understanding of Quality improvement in Europe' (DUQuE).

Setting And Participants: Seventy-four acute care hospitals with 292 departments managing acute myocardial infarction (AMI), hip fracture, stroke, and obstetric deliveries.

Profiling health-care accreditation organizations: an international survey.

Objective: To describe global patterns among health-care accreditation organizations (AOs) and to identify determinants of sustainability and opportunities for improvement.

Design: Web-based questionnaire survey.

Participants: Organizations offering accreditation services nationally or internationally to health-care provider institutions or networks at primary, secondary or tertiary level in 2010.

Comparison of health service accreditation programs in low- and middle-income countries with those in higher income countries: a cross-sectional study.

Objective: The study aim was twofold: to investigate and describe the organizational attributes of accreditation programmes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to determine how or to what extent these differ from those in higher-income countries (HICs) and to identify contextual factors that sustain or are barriers to their survival.

Design: Web-based questionnaire survey.

Participants: National healthcare accreditation providers and those offering international services.

The attitude of health care professionals towards accreditation: A systematic review of the literature.

Accreditation is usually a voluntary program, in which authorized external peer reviewers evaluate the compliance of a health care organization with pre-established performance standards. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature of the attitude of health care professionals towards professional accreditation. A systematic search of four databases including Medline, Embase, Healthstar, and Cinhal presented seventeen studies that had evaluated the attitudes of health care professionals towards accreditation.

Strengthening organizational performance through accreditation research-a framework for twelve interrelated studies: the ACCREDIT project study protocol.

Background: Service accreditation is a structured process of recognising and promoting performance and adherence to standards. Typically, accreditation agencies either receive standards from an authorized body or develop new and upgrade existing standards through research and expert views. They then apply standards, criteria and performance indicators, testing their effects, and monitoring compliance with them.

Impact of accreditation on the quality of healthcare services: a systematic review of the literature.

Background And Objective: Accreditation is usually a voluntary program in which trained external peer reviewers evaluate a healthcare organization's compliance and compare it with pre-established performance standards. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of accreditation programs on the quality of healthcare services

Methods: We did a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the impact of accreditation programs on the quality of healthcare services. Several databases were systematically searched, including Medline, Embase, Healthstar, and Cinhal.

Structural, chemical and electrochemical characterization of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) prepared with various counter-ions and heat treatments.

Electrochemical deposition of the conjugated polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) forms thin, conductive films that are especially suitable for charge transfer at the tissue-electrode interface of neural implants. For this study, the effects of counter-ion choice and annealing parameters on the electrical and structural properties of PEDOT were investigated. Films were polymerized with various organic and inorganic counter-ions.

Accreditation and ISO certification: do they explain differences in quality management in European hospitals?

Background: Hospital accreditation and International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) certification offer alternative mechanisms for improving safety and quality, or as a mark of achievement. There is little published evidence on their relative merits.

Objective: To identify systematic differences in quality management between hospitals that were accredited, or certificated, or neither.

Sustainable healthcare accreditation: messages from Europe in 2009.

Background: Healthcare accreditation has grown rapidly since the 1980s but critics question the value of accreditation rather than certification or inspection. Research has focused more on evidence of impact on provider institutions than on health systems; little has been published on the determinants of growth or decline of accreditation organizations and programmes.

Objective: To describe the development of national accreditation organizations in Europe in relation to incentives, funding and market position in 2009; to identify trends over time using data from previous surveys.

Assessment of the accreditation standards of the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions in Saudi Arabia against the principles of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua).

Background And Objectives: Accreditation is usually a voluntary program, in which trained external peer reviewers evaluate health care organization's compliance with pre-established performance standards. Interest in accreditation is growing in developing countries, but there is little published information on the challenges faced by new programs. In Saudi Arabia, the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) was established to formulate and implement quality standards in all health sectors across the country.

Towards hospital standardization in Europe.

Quality Problem: There is no simple tool to assess compliance with common national and European directives, guidance and professional advice on the management of healthcare institutions. Despite evidence of unacceptable variations in the protection of patient and staff safety little attention has been given to harmonizing the way services are organized and managed.

Initial Assessment: Existing systems which define organizational standards, or assess compliance with them, are not in a position to extend this activity into or across national borders in Europe.

Three-dimensional engineered bone from bone marrow stromal cells and their autogenous extracellular matrix.

Most bone tissue-engineering research uses porous three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds for cell seeding. In this work, scaffold-less 3D bone-like tissues were engineered from rat bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) and their autogenous extracellular matrix (ECM). The BMSCs were cultured on a 2D substrate in medium that induced osteogenic differentiation.

Accreditation in European health care.

Background: In the past 15 years many countries, with widely differing health systems, have established national accreditation programs. A European survey report on accreditation, which includes data and updates from 2003 that were submitted between January and October 2004, is summarized.

Methods: A one-page questionnaire was circulated, with the summary of the 2002 survey, in February 2004 to known contacts in 44 of the larger states in the European Region of the World Health Organization.

The external assessment of health services.

External assessment is increasingly used worldwide to regulate, improve and market health care providers, especially hospitals. The commonest models are peer review, accreditation, statutory inspection, ISO certification and evaluation (usually internal) against the 'business excellence' framework. Each of these is progressively adapting to meet the changing demands of public accountability, clinical effectiveness and improvement of quality and safety, but the most rapid development is in accreditation.

Measuring against clinical standards.

Systematic improvement of health services requires the objective measurement of people, practices and organisations against valid and explicit standards in order to identify and implement appropriate change. Effective quality systems must embrace a wide range of definitions of quality, and a similar variety of approaches to defining, measuring and improving. Clinical performance may be examined from three professional viewpoints--clinical competence: assessment of individual practitioners against explicit criteria to recognise achievement and to promote continuing development.

Quantitation and test of enantiomeric purity of the L-ketohexoses by liquid chromatography with dual refractive index and laser-based chiroptical detection.

Experimental data for the synthetic methods of preparation of the L-ketohexoses have been lacking an analytical method for monitoring the chemical or enzymatic reactions described. Dual refractive index and laser-based chiroptical detection provides an ideal method for following the reactions, since the refractive index detector quantifies the amount of analyte, while the ratio of optical rotation to refractive index response allows the enantiomer mole fraction to be determined. Sulfonated polystyrenedivinylbenzene resin in the Ca form as the stationary phase with H2O at 80 degrees C as the eluent gives base-line separation of sorbose, fructose, tagatose, and psicose.