In network design, the gap between theory and practice is woefully broad. This book narrows it, comprehensively and critically examining current network design models and methods. You will learn where mathematical modeling and algorithmic optimization have been under-utilized. At the opposite extreme, you will learn where they tend to fail to contribute to the twin goals of network efficiency and cost-savings. Most of all, you will learn precisely how to tailor theoretical models to make them as useful as possible in practice. Throughout, the authors focus on the traffic demands encountered in the real world of network design. Their generic approach, however, allows problem formulations and solutions to be applied across the board to virtually any type of backbone communication or computer network. For beginners, this book is an excellent introduction. For seasoned professionals, it provides immediate solutions and a strong foundation for further advances in the use of mathematical modeling for network design. (Less)

Routing, Flow, And Capacity Design In Communication And Computer Networks

Patient participation is increasingly recognized as a key component in the redesign of health care processes and is advocated as a means to improve patient safety. The concept has been successfully applied to various areas of patient care, such as decision making and the management of chronic diseases. We review the origins of patient participation, discuss the published evidence on its efficacy, and summarize the factors influencing its implementation. Patient-related factors, such as acceptance of the new patient role, lack of medical knowledge, lack of confidence, comorbidity, and various sociodemographic parameters, all affect willingness to participate in the health care process. Among health care workers, the acceptance and promotion of patient participation are influenced by other issues, including the desire to maintain control, lack of time, personal beliefs, type of illness, and training in patient-caregiver relationships. Social status, specialty, ethnic origin, and the stakes involved also influence patient and health care worker acceptance. The London Declaration, endorsed by the World Health Organization World Alliance for Patient Safety, calls for a greater role for patients to improve the safety of health care worldwide. Patient participation in hand hygiene promotion among staff to prevent health care—associated infection is discussed as an illustrative example. A conceptual model including key factors that influence participation and invite patients to contribute to error prevention is proposed. Further research is essential to establish key determinants for the success of patient participation in reducing medical errors and in improving patient safety.

Patient Participation: Current Knowledge and Applicability to Patient Safety

Exploring patient involvement in healthcare decision making across different education and functional health literacy groups.

The traffic to be carried by today's European backbone networks increases very rapidly. An important portion of this traffic consists of data traffic (mainly IP-related). In the future data traffic is expected to become the abundantly dominant traffic type, while voice traffic will only account for a very small portion of the total traffic volume. In this paper, some network topologies for such a pan-European fiber-optic backbone network are presented (more details can be found in [1]). These topologies are compared in terms of the efficiency of the network design both from a cost and capacity point of view and in terms of the availability of the connections routed over this network. In order to be able to assess the network topologies under realistic circumstances, the expected traffic demand is forecasted. This enables to make the comparison for the current traffic volume as well as for the traffic patterns of the future. As not all types of (data) traffic require the same degree of survivability and in order to leverage the total capacity cost of the network design, a distinction is made between different recovery options in the optical layer for the different traffic types considered.

Pan-European optical transport networks: An availability-based comparison

In recent years, the importance of social differences in the physician-patient relationship has frequently been the subject of research. A 2002 review synthesised the evidence on this topic. Considering the increasing importance of social inequalities in health care, an actualization of this review seemed appropriate. A systematic search of literature published between 1965 and 2011 on the social gradient in doctor-patient communication. In this review social class was determined by patient's income, education or occupation. Twenty original research papers and meta-analyses were included. Social differences in doctor-patient communication were described according to the following classification: verbal behaviour including instrumental and affective behaviour, non-verbal behaviour and patient-centred behaviour. This review indicates that the literature on the social gradient in doctor-patient communication that was published in the last decade, addresses new issues and themes. Firstly, most of the found studies emphasize the importance of the reciprocity of communication. Secondly, there seems to be a growing interest in patient's perception of doctor-patient communication. By increasing the doctors' awareness of the communicative differences and by empowering patients to express concerns and preferences, a more effective communication could be established.

/pdf/the-social-gradient-in-doctor-patient-communication-53pdrfwtpn.pdf

The social gradient in doctor-patient communication

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/315110/file/6786980.pdf

Socio-economic status of the patient and doctor-patient communication: does it make a difference?

The explosive growth of data traffic-for example, due to the popularity of the Internet-poses important emerging network requirements on today's telecommunication networks. This paper describes how core networks will evolve to optical transport networks (OTNs), which are optimized for the transport of data traffic, resulting in an IP-directly-over-OTN paradigm. Special attention is paid to the survivability of such data-centric optical networks. This becomes increasingly crucial since more and more traffic is multiplexed onto a single fiber (e.g., 160/spl times/10 Gb/s), implying that a single cable cut can affect incredible large traffic volumes. In particular, this paper is tackling multilayer survivability problems, since a data-centric optical network consists of at least an IP and optical layer. In practice, this means that the questions "in which layer or layers should survivability be provided?" and "if multiple layers are chosen for this purpose, then how should this functionality in these layers be coordinated?" have to be answered. In addition to a theoretical study, some case studies are presented in order to illustrate the relevance of the described issues and to help in strategic planning decisions. Two case studies are studying the problem from a capacity viewpoint. Another case study presents simulations from a timing/throughput performance viewpoint.

/pdf/data-centric-optical-networks-and-their-survivability-7uwjw2l14z.pdf

Data-centric optical networks and their survivability

In recent years, telecommunication networks have faced explosive (IP) traffic growth. As traffic keeps growing, network reliability gains more and more importance. This article investigates to which extent switched connections and fast connection provisioning, typical for intelligent optical networks (IONs), can be used to provide resilience in an IP-over-optical multilayer network scenario. This solution, based on transport network flexibility, is compared with more traditional static multilayer resilience schemes in terms of cost (capacity) requirements and operational (dis)advantages.

Intelligent optical networking for multilayer survivability

IP-based backbone networks are gradually moving towards a network model consisting of high-speed routers that are flexibly interconnected by lightpaths set up by an optical transport network consisting of WDM links and optical cross-connects. Recovery mechanisms at both network layers are crucial to reach the high availability requirements of critical services. In such a model, the GMPLS protocol suite can provide a distributed control plane that can be used to deliver rapid and dynamic circuit provisioning of end-to-end optical lightpaths. This article explains that it can be very beneficial to exploit this functionality to enhance the cost effectiveness of multilayer recovery significantly. Several practical case studies illustrate this concept and highlight the opportunities and challenges to be faced.

/pdf/benefits-of-gmpls-for-multilayer-recovery-2wdo3gjjo4.pdf

Benefits of GMPLS for multilayer recovery

Automatic switched optical networks (ASONs) or intelligent optical networks (IONs) facilitate setting up or tearing down end-to-end lightpaths dynamically. For an IP-over-optical network scenario, multi-layer traffic engineering (MTE) allows this optical flexibility to be used to reconfigure the logical IP topology in order to cope with changing traffic demands. Utilising an overlay model limits the information exchange between both layers. However, we show that by incorporating even simple optical cost metrics in the MTE process, we can attain significant cost savings in the optical layer, compared to the case where no information (beyond reachability) is communicated - and this with minimal impact on IP layer performance.

http://opti.tmit.bme.hu/~cinkler/TMP/MYPUBwithcitations/pdf/C_200402_ONDM_FairnessGroom_f.pdf

S. De Maesschalck

Papers

Socio-economic status of the patient and doctor-patient communication: does it make a difference?

Data-centric optical networks and their survivability

Intelligent optical networking for multilayer survivability

Benefits of GMPLS for multilayer recovery

Optical cost metrics in multi-layer traffic engineering for IP-over-optical networks