[Continuing medical education (Cme/Ecm) on medical devices in Italy: a review for the 2019-2021 period.].

Introduction: Health technology assessment (Hta) is a multidisciplinary process that uses explicit methods to determine the value of a health technology across various domains. It aims at supporting decision-makers in promoting an equitable, efficient, and high-quality healthcare system. During 2023, the Italian Minister of Health officially endorsed the National program for Hta on medical devices 2023-2025 (Pnhta), aligning with EU Regulation 2017/745 and EU Regulation 2017/746.

COVID-19 Contact Tracing Strategies During the First Wave of the Pandemic: Systematic Review of Published Studies.

Background: Contact tracing (CT) represented one of the core activities for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the early phase of the pandemic. Several guidance documents were developed by international public health agencies and national authorities on the organization of COVID-19 CT activities. While most research on CT focused on the use digital tools or relied on modelling techniques to estimate the efficacy of interventions, poor evidence is available on the real-world implementation of CT strategies and on the organizational models adopted during the initial phase of the emergency to set up CT activities.

Topotactic fluorination of intermetallics as an efficient route towards quantum materials.

Intermetallics represent an important family of compounds, in which insertion of light elements (H, B, C, N) has been widely explored for decades to synthesize novel phases and promote functional materials such as permanent magnets or magnetocalorics. Fluorine insertion, however, has remained elusive so far since the strong reactivity of this atypical element, the most electronegative one, tends to produce the chemical decomposition of these systems. Here, we introduce a topochemical method to intercalate fluorine atoms into intermetallics, using perfluorocarbon reactant with covalent C-F bonds.

[Relationship between hospital volumes and health outcomes: epidemiological evidence supporting the revision process of the Ministry of Health Decree no. 70 of 2 April 2015.].

Unlabelled: Since its enactment on 2 April 2015, the Decree of the Ministry of Health no.70 has provided a key framework for the reorganization of services to enhance the quality and safety of care. This decree presents the volume thresholds for a series of nosological areas and diagnostic-therapeutic procedures, aiming to improve healthcare outcomes.

Disorder-induced localisation and suppression of superconductivity in YSrCuO.

By means of ab initio calculations within the local density approximation to density functional theory, we investigate the electronic structure of the 60 K superconductor YSrCuO (YSCO). We focus on the effects of the Sr/Ba substitution and on the main structural modifications induced by this substitution experimentally found in the Sr compound, namely the tetragonal symmetry and the oxygen disorder in the basal plane. In the calculations, this disorder is simulated by using a supercell approach.

Evidence of the isoelectronic character of F doping in SmFeAsO F : a first-principles investigation.

We study the electronic structure of the SmFeAsO F alloy by means of first-principle calculations. We find that, contrary to common believe, F-doping does not change the charge balance between electrons and holes free-carriers in SmFeAsO F . For energies within a narrow energy range accross [Formula: see text], the effect of F-doping on the band structure dispersion is tiny in both the paramagnetic and stripe antiferromagnetic phase.

The puzzling structure of CuFeS (bornite) at low temperature.

The crystal structure of CuFeS (bornite) has been investigated using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction at temperatures between 10 and 275 K. Diffraction data confirm that bornite crystallizes in the orthorhombic space group Pbca at 275 K. The unit-cell volume decreases continuously on cooling, but undergoes an abrupt contraction below ∼65 K, where a first-order Pbca→Pca2 structural transition takes place.

Unconventional Disorder Effects in Correlated Superconductors.

We study the effects of disorder on unconventional superconductors in the presence of correlations, and explore a novel correlated disorder paradigm dominated by strong deviations from standard Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory due to generation of local bound states and cooperative impurity behavior driven by Coulomb interactions. Specifically we explain under which circumstances magnetic disorder acts as a strong poison destroying high-T_{c} superconductivity at the sub-1% level, and when nonmagnetic disorder, counterintuitively, hardly affects the unconventional superconducting state while concomitantly inducing an inhomogeneous full-volume magnetic phase. Recent experimental studies of Fe-based superconductors have discovered that such unusual disorder behavior seems to be indeed present in those systems.

[The role of the scientific librarian in HTA:what is the status quo and what are the prospects].

The first Italian experiences of HTA are born inside single hospitals and, lately, regional health care systems. In Italy, anyway, no agency had health technology assessment as an institutional duty until 2007, the year of the founding of the Italian Society of Health Technology Assessment (SIHTA). In times of "spending review", the HTA, whose purpose is to make decisions about health technologies rational and consistent with a context of scarce resources, is increasingly emerging as a priority need of the National Health System.

Wireless capsule endoscopy in Italy: adding context-specific data to the review of the evidence from literature.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the evidence of diagnostic accuracy of the wireless capsule for endoscopy (WCE) for the diagnosis of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (OGIB) and small bowel disease in adults and translate it to the context of the Italian National Health Service.

Methods: We performed a systematic review of secondary and primary literature. We reviewed WCE diagnostic accuracy, safety, economic evaluations for OGIB.