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Full-Text Articles in Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

Characterizing Navigational Tools In A Virtual Search Task, Austin Riggs Dec 2014

Characterizing Navigational Tools In A Virtual Search Task, Austin Riggs

All Theses

The goal of this thesis is to characterize and empirically compare navigational tools in the context of a virtual inspection task. The framework considers both directional-cue navigational tools (e.g., GPS navigation arrows) and trail navigational tools (e.g.,footprints) in comparison to a control condition. Characterizing the tools allows for documented relationships between specific navigational tool-performance combinations. It is intended that by characterizing and comparing the tools a more advantageous use of navigational tools will emerge to increase the benefit provided to both the users and implementers of virtual environments. The focus of the metrics in the paper were distance traveled, speed …


Design Of A Mobile Web-Based Dashboard To Improve Work Practices Of Crna Board Runners, Mahesh Sreedharan Dec 2014

Design Of A Mobile Web-Based Dashboard To Improve Work Practices Of Crna Board Runners, Mahesh Sreedharan

All Theses

Traditional artifacts such as whiteboards serve as key tools in helping healthcare professionals keep track of frequently changing information and managing their work schedule. The simplicity of these tools has made them easy to adopt into the work culture and since these artifacts are not usually electronic, they need no external technical support or maintenance. However, these artifacts present unique challenges to their users, the primary one being lack of mobility offered. The whiteboards are usually stationary and the users will have to assemble near them to update or gather information. In a hospital, this adds significant overhead to the …


Integrating Visual Mnemonics And Input Feedback With Passphrases To Improve The Usability And Security Of Digital Authentication, Kevin Juang Aug 2014

Integrating Visual Mnemonics And Input Feedback With Passphrases To Improve The Usability And Security Of Digital Authentication, Kevin Juang

All Dissertations

The need for both usable and secure authentication is more pronounced than ever before. Security researchers and professionals will need to have a deep understanding of human factors to address these issues. Due to their ubiquity, recoverability, and low barrier of entry, passwords remain the most common means of digital authentication. However, fundamental human nature dictates that it is exceedingly difficult for people to generate secure passwords on their own. System-generated random passwords can be secure but are often unusable, which is why most passwords are still created by humans. We developed a simple system for automatically generating mnemonic phrases …


Two-Stage Methodology For Managing And Controlling Material Flow Between Multiple Construction Projects, Fatmah Almazkoor Aug 2014

Two-Stage Methodology For Managing And Controlling Material Flow Between Multiple Construction Projects, Fatmah Almazkoor

All Dissertations

There is a strong connection between managing and controlling material flow in a supply chain and its performance. While this is true in all supply chains, it is particularly true in the construction supply chain (CSC) where the total demand for parts is finite, the storage space available can be small, and the variability in consumption is high. On the other hand, effectively controlling the CSC can have a significant impact on controlling risk and buffering their impact so that projects stay on schedule and within budget. Currently, a common control of the CSC is with a push-based material ordering …


Pharmacists' And Patients' Perceptions Of Role Of Pharmacist In Discharge Process, Ravi Teja Vempati Aug 2014

Pharmacists' And Patients' Perceptions Of Role Of Pharmacist In Discharge Process, Ravi Teja Vempati

All Theses

The objective of this study was to identify the perceptions of both patients and pharmacists about the pharmacist's role in the hospital discharge process. In order to do this, observations were conducted with the patients and interviews were conducted with both patients and pharmacists. During the interviews, both the patients and pharmacists were asked about the pharmacist's role in the hospital discharge process. The interviews were qualitatively analyzed using the in vivo technique. Four high-level themes emerged from this study: Current role of a pharmacist in the hospital, Ideal role of a pharmacist in the discharge process, Pharmacists' perceptions of …


The Impact Of Block Scheduling And Release Time On Operating Room Efficiency, Rebecca Weiss Aug 2014

The Impact Of Block Scheduling And Release Time On Operating Room Efficiency, Rebecca Weiss

All Theses

Planning for sufficient surgical capacity at a hospital requires that many tactical and operational decisions be made before the day of surgery. Typically, blocks of time in operating rooms (ORs) are assigned and specific surgical cases are placed in rooms. The hospital monitors utilization to determine the schedule's effectiveness in balancing the risk of overtime with idle time. In this thesis, we will examine how adjusting schedule risk ratios and penalty values, and providing shared, open posting time affected the hospital's ability to identify an efficient but high quality and low cost block schedule. The proposed schedules were tested by …


Investigating The Non-Adoption Of Electronic Health Records In Primary Care, Saravanan Ramdoss Aug 2014

Investigating The Non-Adoption Of Electronic Health Records In Primary Care, Saravanan Ramdoss

All Theses

The objective of this study was to investigate the underlying reasons behind primary care centers in the United States not implementing an Electronic Health Record system in spite of looming penalties under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. In order to do this, survey was developed and distributed among healthcare providers who have not yet implemented an EHR system at their practice. The questions for the survey were developed after conducting a literature review of the barriers to EHR implementation. In this review, six themes emerged: technical, cost, productivity, change process, privacy and time. These …


Design Of A Sign-Out Process To Improve Surgical Safety, Sumonthip Chompoodang Gmitro Aug 2014

Design Of A Sign-Out Process To Improve Surgical Safety, Sumonthip Chompoodang Gmitro

All Theses

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the surgical safety checklist consists of three parts; sign-in, time-out and sign-out. It has been observed that the sign-out process is the least frequently completed. In this study, because of a concern for the risk of adverse events occurring in the OR, the sign-out process used in a local hospital was redesigned as a web-based application embedded on a desktop computer and on a mobile device. Both web-based platforms were tested along with the current sign-out process on a computer. Eighteen circulating nurses in the operating rooms of Greenville Memorial Hospital used each …


Strategies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems Under More Realistic Conditions, Kanchala Sudtachat May 2014

Strategies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems Under More Realistic Conditions, Kanchala Sudtachat

All Dissertations

Emergency medical service (EMS) systems provide medical care to pre-hospital patients who need rapid response and transportation. This dissertation proposes a new realistic approach for EMS systems in two major focuses: multiple unit dispatching and relocation strategies. This work makes recommendations for multiple-unit dispatch to multiple call priorities based on simulation optimization and heuristics. The objective is to maximize the expected survival rate. Simulation models are proposed to determine the optimization. A heuristic algorithm is developed for large-scale problems. Numerical results show that dispatching while considering call priorities, rather than always dispatching the closest medical units, could improve the effectiveness …


Monitoring Hospital Safety Climate Using Control Charts Of Non-Harm Events In Reporting Systems, Susan Robinson May 2014

Monitoring Hospital Safety Climate Using Control Charts Of Non-Harm Events In Reporting Systems, Susan Robinson

All Theses

The primary aim of this thesis is to design an approach and demonstrate a methodology to supplement safety culture assessment efforts. The framework affords an enhanced understanding of hospital safety climate, specifically reporting culture, through the use of control charts to monitor non-harm patient safety events documented in reporting systems. Assessing safety culture and climate remains difficult. One of the most common methods to assess safety culture is a self-report survey administered annually. Surveys assess safety climate, because they are a snapshot of the management's and front-line staff's perceptions of safety within their settings. One component of safety culture is …