An EU approach to health system performance assessment: Building trust and learning from each other.

EU countries have recently joined forces to carry out common work on health systems performance assessment (HSPA). After the signature of the Tallinn Charter in 2008, a small group of countries brought the issue of HSPA on the EU agenda; this led the European commission and member states to set up an expert group on HSPA in 2014. This group started by facilitating the exchange of best practices and lessons learnt, with an eye to avoiding duplications with activities of international organisations.

Obtaining full contact for measuring polydimethylsiloxane mechanical properties with flat punch nanoindentation.

Procedure to establish full contact between the sample and the 1 mm diameter cylindrical flat punch tip to measure polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mechanical properties using the Hysitron TriboIndenter is described. This procedure differs from the standard automated indentation because each indent has to be performed manually after establishing full contact with the sample surface. Incomplete contact happens because of the sample tilt with respect to the flat punch surface and results in incorrect elastic modulus values.