Systems Engineering Commons^™

Assessment Of Neck And Shoulder Muscle Coactivations And The Effect On The Musculoskeletal System, Regina Derria Pope-Ford

Dissertations

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) constitute one of the most important occupational health issues in healthcare workers who are susceptible to upper extremity disorders. Yet MSDs in the healthcare professions have not been studied extensively beyond the lower back. The focus population for this research is the field of dentistry where neck and shoulder disorders have been documented to have a high prevalence. Though quantitative data has been collected, many prior studies have focused on self-reported information. The goal of this research is to provide insight into the inter-relationship of muscles in the upper extremities. One way to accomplish this is to …

The Factors Behind A Successful Implementation Of Electronic Health Records Systems, Anjee Gorkhali

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research explores the role that budget for Information System (IS) and technical expertise of healthcare service provider staff play on the successful leap from a partial to exhaustive implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) Systems. Technical expertise in Information Systems might not be easily measurable directly, but there are a number of indicators that could be used as a proxy, such as: Information System (IS) Department Budget, number of IS staff and the extent of technical trainings provided by the IS department to the clinical staff. This research study hypothesizes that quality technical trainings conducted by an IS department …

A Primary Care Workload Production Model For Estimating Relative Value Unit Output, Rachel G. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

Health care costs have grown to unsustainable levels nationally and within the Department of Defense. Military health care costs have historically been difficult to isolate, causing budget cuts to be the vehicle for cost control. Maximum efficiency, therefore, is the goal in order to show improvement. With the Air Force’s new preventive health plan, they aim to drive a long-term posture for cost reduction through prevention. This research effort aimed to develop a tool to assist in future efforts to understand and improve efficiency in workload output, and whether a relationship exists between patient workload demand and the per-encounter variables …

Rapid Sensor Technology: A Risk And System Complexity Analyses Of Early Detection Of Influenza-Like-Illnesses, Cesar Ariel Pinto, Ipek Bozkurt

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The development of effective and reliable methods to defend the nation against biological terrorism remains an urgent challenge to researchers in the areas of risk, bio-defense, public health, and emergency medicine. The emerging threat of the avian flu pandemic also highlights the unpreparedness of our nation's health care system to meet a highly contagious and infectious disease outbreak. The implementation of a rapid sensor technology for early detection of influenza-like-illness provides possible opportunities, as well as problems. Bounding and defining such a complex problem is one of the first challenges this research addresses. Approaching this problem from various perspectives such …

Application Of Queuing Theory And Procedure Time Estimation In A Local Healthcare System, Galina Tsoy

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

People in the United States pay more for their basic healthcare needs than do people in any other nation in the world. When we consider that the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, controlling the majority of the world's resources, it seems only reasonable to ask: Why should it be this way?

In an effort to address this problem, this thesis examines two possible methods of improving health care efficiency in hospitals. The thesis is thus in two parts: the first part examines resource allocation in medical units using Queuing Theory, and the second part examines a …