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Publicações

Publicações por CEGI

2024

The 'Healthcare Access and Quality Index' revisited: A fuzzy data envelopment analysis approach

Autores
Pereira, MA; Camanho, AS;

Publicação
EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS

Abstract
Nowadays, health systems comprise a series of resources structured to provide healthcare services to meet our health needs. However, premature deaths still occur. To quantify and understand personal healthcare conditions affecting such amenable mortality, the Healthcare Access and Quality Index (HAQI) was put forward, evaluating 195 countries and territories since 1990. Nevertheless, the literature acknowledges a series of limitations of this framework, such as the drawbacks of using principal component analysis to aggregate individual indicators, the absence of control for financing and environmental conditions, and the presence of a substantial degree of data uncertainty. Accordingly, we propose a methodological alternative to the computation of the HAQI using a novel fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis model to handle the aforementioned shortcomings. We also propose its extension towards the quantification of efficiency (E-HAQI) - in the sense of value for money - by incorporating financial aspects as modelling inputs. This way, we contribute with innovative modelling approaches that can also deal with the high degree of data uncertainty. Furthermore, in a second -stage analysis, the impact of key exogenous factors on healthcare access and quality is assessed via non -parametric hypothesis testing. Our results show positive and significant correlations of both the revisited HAQI and E-HAQI with the original HAQI 2016 dataset. They also reveal a better use of resources by European and Oceanian countries and territories than by Sub-Saharan African ones. Concerning contextual determinants, socio-demographic development, human development, and the type of health system were found to be statistically significant drivers of healthcare access and quality efficiency.

2024

An innovative benefit-of-the-doubt approach for health system effectiveness: a global case study on amenable mortality

Autores
D'Inverno, G; Santos, JV; Camanho, AS;

Publicação
INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

Abstract
Health system performance assessment (HSPA) is essential for health planning and to improve population health. One of the HSPA domains is related to effectiveness, which can be represented considering different dimensions. Composite indicators can be used to summarize complex constructs involving several indicators. One example of such efforts is the Healthcare Access and Quality Index from the Global Burden of Diseases Study, in which different causes of mortality amenable to health care are summarized in this index through principal component analysis and exploratory factor analysis. While these approaches use the variance of the indicators, marginal improvement is not considered, that is, the distance to the best practice frontier. In this study we propose an innovative benefit-of-the-doubt approach to combine frontier analysis and composite indicators, using amenable mortality estimates for 188 countries. In particular, we include flexible aggregating weighting schemes and a robust and conditional approach. The dual formulation gives information on the peers and the potential mortality rate reduction targets considering the background conditions. In absolute terms, Andorra and high-income countries are the most effective regarding healthcare access and quality, while sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries are the least effective. North African and Middle Eastern countries benefit the most when epidemiological patterns, geographical proximity, and country development status are considered.

2024

Learning mobility in European higher education: How has the Union's flagship initiative progressed?

Autores
Pereira, MA; D'Inverno, G; Camanho, AS;

Publicação
ANNALS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Abstract
In 2010, the European Commission set out the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation as one of the priorities of its Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. This culminated in the 'Youth on the Move' flagship initiative, aimed at enhancing the performance and international attractiveness of Europe's higher education institutions and raising the Union's overall education and training levels. Therefore, it is relevant to assess the performance of the 'Youth on the Move' initiative via the creation of composite indicators (CIs) and, ultimately, monitor the progress made by European countries in creating a positive environment supporting learner mobility. For this reason, we make use of the CI-building 'Benefit-of-the-Doubt' approach, in its robust and conditional setting to account for outliers and the human development of those nations, to exploit the European Commission's Mobility Scoreboard framework between 2015/2016 and 2022/2023. Furthermore, we incorporate the value judgements of experts in the sector to construct utility scales and compute weight restrictions through multi-criteria decision analysis. This enables the conversion of ordinal scales into interval ones based on knowledgeable information about reality in higher education. In the end, the results point to a slight performance improvement, but highlight the need to improve the 'Recognition of learning outcomes', 'Foreign language preparation', and 'Information and guidance'.

2024

Multidimensional subgroup discovery on event logs

Autores
Ribeiro, J; Fontes, T; Soares, C; Borges, JL;

Publicação
EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS

Abstract
Subgroup discovery (SD) aims at finding significant subgroups of a given population of individuals characterized by statistically unusual properties of interest. SD on event logs provides insight into particular behaviors of processes, which may be a valuable complement to the traditional process analysis techniques, especially for low -structured processes. This paper proposes a scalable and efficient method to search significant SD rules on frequent sequences of events, exploiting their multidimensional nature. With this method, it is intended to identify significant subsequences of events where the distribution of values of some target aspect is significantly different than the same distribution for the entire event log. A publicly available real -life event log of a Dutch hospital is used as a running example to demonstrate the applicability of our method. The proposed approach was applied on a real -life case study based on the public transport of a medium size European city (Porto, Portugal), for which the event data consists of 133 million smartcard travel validations from buses, trams and trains. The results include a characterization of mobility flows over multiple aspects, as well as the identification of unexpected behaviors in the flow of commuters (public transport). The generated knowledge provided a useful insight into the behavior of travelers, which can be applied at operational, tactical and strategic business levels, enhancing the current view of the transport services to transport authorities and operators.

2024

Artificial intelligence technologies: Benefits, risks, and challenges for sustainable business models

Autores
Torres, AI; Beirão, G;

Publicação
Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Sustainable Accounting

Abstract
This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can promote increased business revenues, cost reductions, and enhanced customer experience, as well as society's well-being in a sustainable way. However, these AI benefits also come with risks and challenges concerning organizations, the environment, customers, and society, which need further investigation. This chapter also examines and discusses how AI can either enable or inhibit the delivery of the goals recognized in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Business Models Development. In this chapter, the authors conduct a bibliometric review of the emerging literature on artificial intelligence (AI) technolo¬gies implications on sustainable business models (SBM), in the perspective of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and investigate research spanning the areas of AI, and SDGs within the economic group. The authors examine an effective sample of 69 publications from 49 different journals, 225 different institutions, and 47 different countries. On the basis of the bibliometric analysis, this study selected the most significant published sources and examined the changes that have occurred in the conceptual framework of AI and SBM in light of SDGs research. This chapter makes some significant contributions to the literature by presenting a detailed bibliometric analysis of the research on the impacts of AI on SBM, enhancing the understanding of the knowledge structure of this research topic and helping to identify key knowledge gaps and future challenges. © 2024, IGI Global. All rights reserved.

2024

Artificial Intelligence Technologies

Autores
Torres, AI; Beirão, G;

Publicação
Advances in Finance, Accounting, and Economics

Abstract

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