The Grand Banks commercial fishing industry has been faced with several crises in the past decades. These crises have included the major financial crunch and inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the resources collapse of the Northern cod stock and other groundfish stocks in the 1990s followed by the foreign fishing disputes of the mid 1990s. The thesis examines the evolution of the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada during these critical years with focus on the fisheries of the Grand Banks. A linear programming model of the configuration of the Grand Banks commercial fishing fleet is formulated to describe the post 2000 period. The model is driven using the results of an extensive analysis of historical records for this recent period. The model results are validated by comparing them with historical average annual data over the period 2000-2005. The linear programming model is run under several scenarios emulating changes in government policy and economic conditions affecting the harvesting sector. Based on the results, alternative fishing fleet configurations for the Grand Banks fishery are defined to improve the economic viability of the fishing fleet. The model pointed to changes in fleet configuration including a rationalization of the shrimp and crab fleets and a shift to longline vessels with higher-valued product for groundfish harvesting. Once implemented, these suggestions would advance the goals of the new "Oceans to Plate" approach to fisheries management recently announced by Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.

This thesis aims to establish the principles that should govern the conception of health websites in Aboriginal context. For Aboriginal Canadians in remote communities, it is essential to gain accurate, reliable and relevant access to health information. Health websites customized to the preferences of users and to the cultural particularities of Aboriginal culture are a possible means to vehicle this information to them. A user-centered approach is used to gather data on the preferences of presentation types and content on health websites for Aboriginal people. Remote focus group sessions were conducted using videoconferencing. Different Web presentation types, mainly videos and text-based Web pages, from Diabetes and COPD websites, are presented to the users during the focus group sessions. A qualitative data analysis is done to examine user preferences and what factors have an influence on those preferences. Key findings include: (1) the type of disease being presented on the websites has an influence on the preferences of users; (2) the preferences of users vary based on the different disease aspects presented; (3) the different factors related to the living location, such as the limited access to healthcare and the Internet, the inaccessibility of certain foods and the diversity of cultures of the different remote communities also affect the preferences of users; (4) users prefer websites to contain elements related to their culture. The findings of this research have allowed for the development of the principles for the conception of health websites. Health website owners should apply these principles to use the appropriate presentation types, add content that is more meaningful to its target audience, and reorganize the content so that the most relevant information is more easily accessible to the users. As a consequence of conducting qualitative research, the main limitation of this research is the small sample size. Future research should be conducted with a larger sample size that is more representative of the general population and of the heterogeneity of Aboriginal culture to confirm the results of this study.

This study was to evaluate the development level of Clinical Engineering Departments (CEDs) in hospitals in developing countries. The method of data collection was a survey done by structured questionnaire sent by Email and Listserv. In total, 61 responses (9% response rate) were grouped into two regions: Latin America (27 from Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil) and Asia (34 from India, Bangladesh, P.R. China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa); The responses from those developing countries were compared with those from developed countries acquired in previous studies done by Frize and Glouhova. In this study, results indicate that CEDs that responded to the survey from developing countries have similar organizational structure as developed countries, but there are differences in personnel educational levels, responsibilities, and resources. We also identified differences in the level of development of CEDs in respondents from Asia and those from Latin America. The latter were more advanced overall than those in Asia, but CEDs in both regions need to improve their level of development. Future research should focus on collecting more data from CEDs of developing countries, and expand the quantitative analysis that will be possible with a larger sample.

A clinical caremap is a cost-effective tool for clinical process improvement that has been accepted in hospitals and various healthcare organizations in many countries. However, compared to the literature describing the initial development of the clinical caremaps, the evaluation of the impact of the variances in the caremap pathway on the patient's expected outcomes and the patient's length of stay (LOS) remains relatively less analyzed. In this research, we deal with the issue of variances in the clinical caremap by building a Bayesian belief network named BBN_RPC to model the radical prostatectomy caremap. The BBN_RPC model provides insight into probabilistic dependencies that exist among the activities (variables) in the caremap. We then use the BBN_RPC model to analyze possible variances and to make inferences. The results show that most of the activities in the caremap are related with each other and to some extent linked with the patient's length of stay (LOS), whereas different activities have different weights on the LOS. Using radical prostatectomy patients' data from a retrospective chart study conducted at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, we have applied the BBN_RPC model to predict a patient's future conditions and the LOS, based on the current observations. Predictive accuracy of the BBN_RPC model was evaluated by cross validation tests, which showed the accuracy for predicting the patient's LOS, given the patient's observations during the first two post-op days, is at approximately 94% level.

This thesis provides an economic and mathematical framework, and the computing tools to compare the effects, costs and incremental cost-effectiveness of acute or preventative interventions for cardiovascular disease. A Finite Space Markov Chain Decision Analysis Model is designed by integrating a Decision Trees Model and a Markov Chain Model. The model and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis are implemented by using SAS/IML both on a PC with one processor and on a machine with multiple processors of the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory. A sample case with four states and eight intervention policies is studied to illustrate the framework, which is composed of (1) life path simulation, (2) cost and effectiveness estimation, (3) cost-effectiveness analysis, (4) sensitivity analysis, and (5) performance analysis on different platforms. Solution of delay effects, correlation among risk factors, and fluctuation in discount rate are viewed as limitations of the thesis and rewarding areas for further research.

In the past two decades, China has achieved a spectacular success in its economic growth. As a basic input for the production process, the forest resource has been one of the fundamental factors propping up the expansion of China's economy. When China is absorbing imports of timber products in the global market, studies of China's forestry system and its timber market incite greater interest. This paper represents a systematic approach to probe into the comprehensive realities of China's forestry system and its timber market. Econometric methods are applied in analyzing the demand and supply patterns. The empirical analysis is used to forecast the quantity demanded for timber products in China.

Life-expectancy and Life-years lost are frequently used and analyzed indices of survival. Life tables and Markov models are two exact approaches to calculate these indices; however cumbersome calculation limits their usage in real situations. Some simple approximation approaches have therefore been developed since a convenient and accurate approximation is critical both to develop a treatment plan of a patient by physicians and to assess health policies by health policy makers. These approximation approaches include the DEALE (Declining Exponential Approximation of Life Expectancy), new DEALEs, the IPH method (A method developed at Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa) and the Keyfitz approach. A new approach has been developed to achieve better accuracy and maintain ease of application by extending the Keyfitz approach. To make the new approach less dependent on age-stratified tabulations, a convenient formula for the EME (Established market economics) region is developed. Its accuracy, robustness, and ease of application are demonstrated.

Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), for providing patient specific advice, can only be accepted in clinical practice if they can fit in a clinician workflow. This would require such a CDSS to have diversified support capabilities, to be mobile, and to have flexible functionality. Such a system can be designed and developed only in a modular fashion where the high level abstractions describe the logic among different system components. Ontology, which is a formal specification of shared conceptualization, can be used to create a high level abstraction. Such decoupling of abstract CDSS logic from low level implementation facilitates developing and adding new applications and increases the reusability of different system components. In this research it is argued that a developed CDSS, according to ontology driven design with the ontological model of a problem domain expanded by a clinical decision support requirements, allows the creation of a system that is aligned with clinical workflow. In this research the proposed approach is illustrated with the CDSS for triaging pediatric hip pain (HP) in the Emergency Department. This application (called MET-HP) is created within the MET (Mobile Emergency Triage) environment that implements the ontology driven design principles. MET-HP is a mobile CDSS that includes a decision model derived from the analysis of retrospective chart data and it facilitates early triage of a child using incomplete data. Keywords. Ontology; ontological model; ontology driven design; ontological engineering; clinical decision support system; data mining; knowledge model; knowledge based system.

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