INTRODUCTION: In the Netherlands, Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRLs) have not been based on a national survey as proposed by ICRP. Instead, local exposure data, expert judgment and the international scientific literature were used as sources. This study investigated whether the current DRLs are reasonable for Dutch radiological practice.METHODS: A national project was set up, in which radiography students carried out dose measurements in hospitals supervised by medical physicists. The project ran from 2014 to 2017 and dose values were analysed for a trend over time. In the absence of such a trend, the joint yearly data sets were considered a single data set and were analysed together. In this way the national project mimicked a national survey.RESULTS: For six out of eleven radiological procedures enough data was collected for further analysis. In the first step of the analysis no trend was found over time for any of these procedures. In the second step the joint analysis lead to suggestions for five new DRL values that are far below the current ones. The new DRLs are based on the 75 percentile values of the distributions of all dose data per procedure.CONCLUSION: The results show that the current DRLs are too high for five of the six procedures that have been analysed. For the other five procedures more data needs to be collected. Moreover, the mean weights of the patients are higher than expected. This introduces bias when these are not recorded and the mean weight is assumed to be 77 kg.IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The current checking of doses for compliance with the DRLs needs to be changed. Both the procedure (regarding weights) and the values of the DRLs should be updated.
This paper focuses on the topical and problematic area of social innovations. The aim of this paper is to develop an original approach to the allocation of social innovations, taking into account characteristics such as the degree of state participation, the scope of application, the type of initiations as well as the degree of novelty, which will be elaborated on further in this article. In order to achieve this goal, the forty-two most successful social innovations were identified and systematized. The results of this study demonstrated that 73.5% of social innovations are privately funded, most of them operating on an international level with a high degree of novelty. Moreover, 81% of all social innovations are civic initiatives. Social innovations play an important role in the growth of both developed and less developed countries alike as highlighted in our extensive analysis
Ambient monitoring systems offer great possibilities for health trend analysis in addition to anomaly detection. Health trend analysis helps care professionals to evaluate someones functional health and direct or evaluate the choice of interventions. This paper presents one case study of a person that was followed with an ambient monitoring system for almost three years and another of a person that was followed for over a year. A simple algorithm is applied to make a location based data representation. This data is visualized for care professionals, and used for inspecting the regularity of the pattern with means of principal component analysis (PCA). This paper provides a set of tools for analyzing longitudinal behavioral data for health assessments. We advocate a standardized data collection procedure, particularly the health metrics that could be used to validate health focused sensor data analyses.
The overall purpose of this consultancy was to support the activities under the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Programme of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in developing the 7th pan-European environmental assessment, an indicator based and thematic assessment, implemented jointly with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The series of environmental assessments of the pan-European region provide up to-date and policy-relevant information on the interactions between the environment and society. This consultancy was to:> Draft the input on drivers and developments to chapter 1.2 of the assessment related to the environmental theme “4.2 Applying principles of circular economy to sustainable tourism”.> Suggest to UNECE and UNEP the most policy relevant indicators from UNECE-environmental, SDG indicators and from other indicator frameworks such as EEA or OECD for the environmental theme for the sub-chapter 4.2.> Assess the current state, trends and recent developments and prepare the substantive part of sub-chapter 4.2 (summary - part I) and an annex (part II) with the detailed analysis and findings.
Despite Dutch Hospitality industry’s significant economic value, employers struggle to attract and retain early career professionals at a time when tourism is forecasted to grow exponentially (Ruël, 2018). Universally, hospitality management graduates are shunning hospitality careers preferring other career paths; stimulating the Dutch Hospitality to find innovative ways of attracting and retaining early career professionals. Following calls from the Human Resource Management (HRM) community (Ehnert, 2009), we attribute this trend to personnel being depicted as rentable resources, driving profit’’ often at personal expense. For example, hotels primarily employ immigrants and students for a minimum wage suppressing salaries of local talent (Kusluvan, et al 2010, O’Relly and Pfeffer, 2010). Similarly, flattening organizational structures have eliminated management positions, placing responsibility on inexperienced shoulders, with vacancies commonly filled by pressured employees accepting unpaid overtime jeopardizing their work life balance (Davidson, et al 2010,). These HRM practices fuel attrition by exposing early career professionals to burnout (Baum et al, 2016, Goh et al, 2015, Deery and Jog, 2009). Collectively this has eroded the industry’s employer brand, now characterized by unsocial working hours, poor compensation, limited career opportunities, low professional standing, high turnover and substance abuse (Mooney et al, 2016, Gehrels and de Looij, 2011). In contrast, Sustainable HRM “enables an organizational goal achievement while simultaneously reproducing the human resource base over a long-lasting calendar time (Ehnert, 2009, p. 74).” Hence, to overcome this barrier we suggest embracing the ROC framework (Prins et al, 2014), which (R)espects internal stakeholders, embraces an (O)pen HRM approach while ensuring (C)ontinuity of economic and societal sustainability which could overcome this barrier. Accordingly, we will employ field research, narrative discourse, survey analysis and quarterly workshops with industry partners, employees, union representatives, hotel school students to develop sustainable HRM practices attracting and retaining career professionals to pursue Dutch hospitality careers.
Background:Many business intelligence surveys demonstrate that Digital Realities (Virtual reality and Augmented Reality) are becoming a huge market trend in many sectors, and North America is taking the lead in this emerging domain. Tourism is no exception and the sector in Europe must innovate to get ahead of the curve of this technological revolution, but this innovation needs public support.Project partnership:In order to provide labs, startups and SMEs willing to take this unique opportunity with the most appropriate support policies, 9 partner organizations from 8 countries (FR, IT, HU, UK, NO, ES, PL, NL) decided to work together: regional and local authorities, development agencies, private non-profit association and universities.Objective of the project:Thanks to their complementary experiences and know-how, they intend to improve policies of the partner regions (structural funds and regional policies), in order to foster a tourist channeled innovation in the Digital Realities sector.Approach:All partners will work together on policy analysis tasks before exchanging their best initiatives and transferring them from one country to another. This strong cooperation will allow them to build the best conditions to foster innovation thanks to more effective structural funds policies and regional policies.Main activities & outputs:8 policy instruments are addressed, among which 7 relate to structural funds programmes. Basis for exchange of experience: Reciprocal improvement analysis and 8 study trips with peer-review of each partner’s practices. Video reportages for an effective dissemination towards other territories in Europe.Main expected results:At least 16 good practices identified. 8 targeted policy instruments improved. At least 27 staff members will transfer new capacities in their intervention fields. At least 8 involved stakeholders with increased skills and knowledge from exchange of experience. Expected 17 appearances in press and media, including at European level.
