Healthcare providers throughout the world are facing unprecedented change. In rising to social, demographic and economic pressures, the National Health Service is mobilising hospital treatments into patient’s homes (Darzi, 2006). The black nursing bag, the universal transportation tool of the district nurse has remained impervious to design change for over 100 years. The goal of the PhD is to equip newly formed neighbourhood care teams working in this emergent healthcare setting with a 21st century nursing bag. The design practice seeks to optimise the efficient delivery of patient care, standardize patient experiences in an inconsistent setting and enhances patient safety performances through design. The PhD by practice is sponsored by the Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and supported by NHS East Riding of Yorkshire (NHS ERY). The PhD is participatory and proposes a refined theoretical model to achieve its objectives: a strategy- system- experience- product continuum. Qualitative and quantitative methods have: identified variance in the nursing bags used in practice; captured the presence of MRSA inside and on bags; applied Lego Serious Play to envision aspirational products; analogous case studies determining the discrete attributes of world-class services delivered in confined spaces and luxury travel products; captured workflow using link analysis of simulated treatments; determined the efficacy of hand-cleaning techniques; evaluated of design forms using UV analysis to enhance the effectiveness hand-cleaning; heuristic evaluations informing design decisions: stakeholder presentations, international design competitions and industry opinion. Analytical, creative and experimental collaborative practices have contributed to the co-creation of a world-class nursing bag fit for the challenges of the 21st century. Validation workshops have verified that the new bag reshapes the way home healthcare is delivered, experienced and accepted: increases clinical efficiency through modularity, standardises the patient’s service experience and delivers economic benefits to the commissioners of home healthcare services.

No description available.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a de facto standard for data exchange in the World Wide Web. Indexing plays a key role in improving the execution of XML queries over that data. In this thesis we discuss the three main categories of indexes proposed in the literature to handle the XML semistructured data model, and identify limitations and open problems related to these indexing schemes. Based on our findings, we propose two novel XML index structures to overcome most of these limitations: a native index structure called Level-based Tree Index for XML databases (LTIX) and a relational index structure called Universal Index Structure for XML data (UISX). A proper labeling scheme is an essential part of a well-built XML index structure. We found that existing labeling schemes are not suitable for our index structures and therefore propose a novel labeling scheme, Level-based Labeling Scheme (LLS), which has the advantages of most popular types of labeling schemes while eliminating the main disadvantages. We then combine our LLS labeling scheme with our index structures. An evaluation shows that LLS performs well in comparison to existing labeling schemes using different mappings to relational tables. We propose the LTIX to minimize the number of joins and matches required to evaluate twig queries, and also to facilitate effective query optimization through early pruning of the space search. Our experimental results show that this approach performs well in comparison to existing state-of-the-art approaches. We propose the UISX to overcome the key problem with the state-of-the-art approaches, namely that they cannot support efficient processing of twig queries without requiring significant storage. We use a light-weight native XML engine on top of an SQL engine to perform the optimization related to the structure of the XML data prior to shredding. Experimental results show that our approach achieves lower response times than other similar approaches while using less space to store XML data. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2011-03-15 23:03:50.15

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiii, 122 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-122). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-55).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-55) Also available in print.

The continued publication of articles concerning drama and theatre in scholarly periodicals has resulted in the "loss" of much research due to the lack of retrieval tools. This work is designed to partially fill this lack by cassifying the articles found in fourteen current periodicals using Trussler's taxonomy. This bibliography could also be updated on a regular basis. The issues that are presently not available through the North Texas State University Libraries could be ordered, classified and appended to this work. In short, this thesis is a start toward the opening of the source material held by the campus libraries. But it is only a start. There is still a treasure trove yet to be developed.