The impending shortage and cost of training the future plastic surgical workforce.

An expanding US population with increasing demand for aesthetic surgery, growing competition from other specialties, a constant rate of retiring plastic surgeons, and a static number of residents places increasing demands on the plastic surgical workforce in the coming years. Without certain changes, the plastic surgical workforce will be unable to meet their demand, and other specialties will increasingly encroach on aesthetic and reconstructive procedures. Given Census Bureau predictions for the US population, the numbers of residents allotted by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, The American Board of Plastic Surgery data on the current plastic surgical workforce, and using a population-based analysis to predict future shortages in plastic surgery residents, the workforce shortage can be estimated as 800 residents in 2020 and up to 3223 residents in 2050.

Standardizing clinical trials workflow representation in UML for international site comparison.

Background: With the globalization of clinical trials, a growing emphasis has been placed on the standardization of the workflow in order to ensure the reproducibility and reliability of the overall trial. Despite the importance of workflow evaluation, to our knowledge no previous studies have attempted to adapt existing modeling languages to standardize the representation of clinical trials. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a computational language that can be used to model operational workflow, and a UML profile can be developed to standardize UML models within a given domain.