Realities of Using Drones to Transport Laboratory Samples: Insights from Attended Routes in a Mixed-Methods Study.

Purpose: Drones are an emerging technology with the potential to improve laboratory logistics. This study is based on the hypothesis that the implementation of drones will benefit from an understanding of the current system and that existing transport solutions should be optimized before drone solutions are considered. It focuses on carriers transporting biological material today by car along a traditional circular route.

A Drone Logistic Model for Transporting the Complete Analytic Volume of a Large-Scale University Laboratory.

We present a model for drone transport of the complete annual analytic volume of 6.5 million analyses-(routine and emergency) between two inner-city university laboratories at Oslo University Hospital located 1.8 km apart and with a time restriction for the analyses of no more than 60 min.

The Moderating Role of Pro-Innovative Leadership and Gender as an Enabler for Future Drone Transports in Healthcare Systems.

Drones have been suggested as an emerging technology that has the potential to disrupt and improve healthcare. The attitude among healthcare workers towards the use of drones is important for its successful implementation. Our aim was to examine individual and institutional variables among employees that may be relevant for the successful implementation of drones.

Pathologic Blood Samples Tolerate Exposure to Vibration and High Turbulence in Simulated Drone Flights, but Plasma Samples Should be Centrifuged After Flight.

Objective: Most of the previous studies of drone transport of blood samples examined normal blood samples transported under tranquil air conditions. We studied the effects of 1- and 2-hour drone flights using random vibration and turbulence simulation (10-30 g-force) on blood samples from 16 healthy volunteers and 74 patients with varying diseased.

Methods: Thirty-two of the most common analytes were tested.

Improving accessibility for outpatients in specialist clinics: reducing long waiting times and waiting lists with a simple analytic approach.

Background: Lack of resources is often cited as a reason for long waiting times and queues in health services. However, recent research indicates these problems are related to factors such as uncoordinated variation of demand and capacity, planning horizons, and lower capacity than the potential of actual resources. This study aimed to demonstrate that long waiting times and wait lists are not necessarily associated with increasing demand or changes in resources.

Assessing physician productivity following Norwegian hospital reform: A panel and data envelopment analysis.

Background: Although health care reforms may improve efficiency at the macro level, less is known regarding their effects on the utilization of health care personnel. Following the 2002 Norwegian hospital reform, we studied the productivity of the physician workforce and the effect of personnel mix on this measure in all nineteen Norwegian hospitals from 2001 to 2013.

Methods: We used panel analysis and non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) to study physician productivity defined as patient treatments per full-time equivalent (FTE) physician.

Physicians' engagement in dual practices and the effects on labor supply in public hospitals: results from a register-based study.

Background: Physician dual practice, a combination of public and private practice, has attracted attention due to fear of reduced work supply and a lack of key personnel in the public system, increase in low priority treatments, and conflicts of interest for physicians who may be competing for their own patients when working for private suppliers. In this article, we analyze both choice of dual practice among hospital physicians and the dual practices' effect on work supply in public hospitals.

Methods: The sample consisted of 12,399 Norwegian hospital physicians working in public hospitals between 2001 and 2009.

Individual and hospital-specific factors influencing medical graduates' time to medical specialization.

Previous studies of gender differences in relation to medical specialization have focused more on social variables than hospital-specific factors. In a multivariate analysis with extended Cox regression, we used register data for socio-demographic variables (gender, family and having a child born during the study period) together with hospital-specific variables (the amount of supervision available, efficiency pressure and the type of teaching hospital) to study the concurrent effect of these variables on specialty qualification among all 2474 Norwegian residents who began specialization in 1999-2001. We followed the residents until 2010.

Variations in labor supply between female and male hospital physicians: results from a modern welfare state.

In industrialized countries, female physicians have up to 10h lower labor supply a week than male physicians. At the same time, the number of female physicians is increasing. The question analyzed in this article is whether these differences in labor supply for female and male hospital physicians persist in a modern welfare society, such as Norway, where comprehensive welfare reforms aim to reduce gender inequality are implemented.

[Salary and clinical productivity among physicians in Norwegian somatic hospitals 2001-2008].

Background: Analysis of the future need for medical doctors necessitates an assessment of their productivity. The goals of this study were to analyze the relation between doctors' work force and the increased activity in hospitals, and to describe the development of working hours and salary for hospital doctors in a gender perspective.

Material And Methods: Information about man-labour years, working time and salary for doctors in Norwegian somatic hospitals was retrieved for the period 2001-2008.