• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.247-255
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• 2017

Background: South Korea has experienced problems with excessive pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2010, the South Korean government introduced an outpatient prescription incentive program to effectively manage pharmaceutical expenditures. Therefore, we examined the relationship between the outpatient prescription incentive program and pharmaceutical expenditures. Methods: We used data from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database, which included medical claims filed for 22,732 clinics from 2011-2014 to evaluate associated pharmaceutical expenditures. We performed multiple regression analysis and Poisson regression analysis using generalized estimating equation models to examine the associations between outpatient prescription incentives and the outcome variables. Results: The data used in this study consisted of 123,392 cases from 22,372 clinics (average 5.4 periods follow-up). Clinics that had received outpatient prescription incentives in the last period had better cost saving and Outpatient Prescribing Costliness Index (OPCI) (received: proportion of cost saving, ${\beta}=6.8179$; p-value < 0.0001; OPCI, ${\beta}=-0.0227$; p-value < 0.0001; reference = non-received). Moreover, these clinics had higher risk in the provision of outpatient prescription incentive (relative risk, 2.772; 95% confidence interval, 2.720 to 2.824). The associations were higher in clinics that had separate prescribing and dispensing programs, or had professional staff. Conclusion: The introduction of an outpatient prescription incentive program for clinics effectively managed problems with rapid increases of pharmaceutical expenditures in South Korea. However, the pharmaceutical expenditures still increased in spite of the positive impact of the outpatient prescription incentive program. Therefore, healthcare professionals and health policy makers should develop more effective alternatives (i.e., for clinics without separate prescribing and dispensing programs) based on our results.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.181-189
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• 2017

The purpose of this research is to set a standard for deciding competitive marketing prices of new supplying apartment houses and to analyze decision factors in sale price of supplying apartment houses with Analytic Hierarchy Process; the resulted model does not use the method that joins the land cost and the cost of construction together, but the method that compares the sales prices of surrounding apartments. This research tries to set a standard for decision of the prices of newly supplying apartment houses by classifying the determinants into the $1^{st}$ step(4 factors), the $2^{nd}$ step(9 factors), and the $3^{rd}$ step(25 factors). According to the process, the relative importance of decision factors in the sale prices is determined and this should be used as the index of sale prices for newly supplying apartment houses when the houses are provided. In addition, through the $2^{nd}$ step including 9 factors, the comparative model for sale prices is defined and the model is presented to be applied in the real business. Subsequent study additionally considering the factors apart from marketing which tries to find a generalized standard needs to be conducted.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.44-54
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• 2011

Intelligent transport services on smart roads tend to have a problem at the stage of benefit-cost analysis that can not secure economic feasibility of the new services which increase early investment cost on building its infrastructure. It is expected that the number of road accidents, 'Incident/Accident', will decline through various safety services using intelligent safety facilities, intelligent transport management and so on, and that traffic congestion will also decrease. The effect of traffic congestion reduction could be the benefit by safety improvement, however current investment-analysis process in Korea does not appropriate it as a benefit. This study estimated road blocking time with 'Incident/Accident' classification and highway accident data of past three years. It also developed a generalized model by a regression analysis with a microscopical simulation. Furthermore, it suggested necessary units on quantitative analysis in order to make the developed model applicable to investment evaluation. As a result of applying the developed model to Smart-Highway Project, it showed that total safety improvement benefit is about 139 billion dollars over 30 years when it is supposed that accident decreasing rate by smart safety facilities is 10%.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.282-292
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• 2022

Background: Aging societies face social problems of increased medical expenses for older adults due to increased geriatric diseases. This study aims to analyze the relationship between the state change of multiple chronic conditions (MCC) and out-of-pocket medical expenses in the elderly aged 60 or older. Methods: The 2014-2018 Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging data were used for 2,202 elderly people. Four status change groups were established according to the change in the number of chronic diseases. The association between the change of MCC and the out-of-pocket medical cost was analyzed using the generalized estimating equation model analysis. Results: The average out-of-pocket total medical costs were 1,384,900 won for participants with MCC and 542,700 won for those without MCC, which was a statistically significant difference (p<0.0001). Compared to the reference group (simple chronic disease, SCD→SCD), the change in multiple chronic conditions significantly increased the total out-of-pocket medical expenses in MCC→MCC and SCD→MCC groups (MCC→MCC: 𝛽=0.8260, p<0.0001; SCD→MCC: 𝛽=0.6607, p<0.0001). Conclusion: In this study, it was confirmed that the prevalence of MCC increased with age, and the out-of-pocket medical cost increased in the case of MCC. Continuity of treatment can be achieved for patients with MCC, and the system and management of treatment for MCC are required to receive appropriate treatment.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.505-515
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• 2004

One of the most important issue in location-aware computing is tracking moving objects efficiently. To this end, an efficient protocol which updates location information in a location server is highly needed. In fact, the performance of a location update strategy highly depends on the assumed mobility pattern. In most existing works, however, the mobility issue has been disregarded and too simplified as linear function of time. In this paper, we propose a new mobility model, called state-based mobility model (SMM) to provide more generalized framework for both describing the mobility and updating location information of complexly moving objects. We also introduce the state-based location update protocol (SLUP) based on this mobility model. Using experimental comparison, we illustrate that the proposed technique is many times better in reducing location update cost and the communication bandwidth consumption.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.39-49
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• 2007

Recently three-dimensional (3-D) die design and production process has been widely introduced into the tooling shops of automotive manufacturers to reduce time-to-production of brand-new automobiles. 3-D solid models created in CAD systems are used not only for various simulations for design verification, but also for NC tool path generation to machine dies and their Styrofoam patterns. However, a lot of time and cost will be required to build solid models for dies if designers use only the generalized modeling capabilities of commercial 3-D CAD systems. To solve this problem, it is necessary to customize 3-D CAD system for the specific die design and manufacturing process. This paper describes a dedicated 3-D CAD system based on Unigraphics for die design for automotive body panels. The system provides not only 3-D design capabilities, but also standard part libraries, to enhance design productivity. The design process modeling technology has been introduced to facilitate redesign of the die for the modified panel. By introducing this system, dies can be designed more rapidly in the 3-D space, and their solid data can be directly transferred to CAM tools for NC tool path generation and simulation tools for virtual manufacturing.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1233-1250
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• 2016

Cracks in plate-like structures are some of the main reasons for destruction of the entire structure. In this study, a novel two-stage methodology is proposed for damage detection of flexural plates using an optimized artificial neural network. In the first stage, location of damages in plates is investigated using curvature-moment and curvature-moment derivative concepts. After detecting the damaged areas, the equations for damage severity detection are solved via Bat Algorithm (BA). In the second stage, in order to efficiently reduce the computational cost of model updating during the optimization process of damage severity detection, multiple damage location assurance criterion index based on the frequency change vector of structures are evaluated using properly trained cascade feed-forward neural network (CFNN) as a surrogate model. In order to achieve the most generalized neural network as a surrogate model, its structure is optimized using binary version of BA. To validate this proposed solution method, two examples are presented. The results indicate that after determining the damage location based on curvature-moment derivative concept, the proposed solution method for damage severity detection leads to significant reduction of computational time compared with direct finite element method. Furthermore, integrating BA with the efficient approximation mechanism of finite element model, maintains the acceptable accuracy of damage severity detection.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.247-264
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• 2008

This paper considers the integrated process control procedure for detecting special causes in an ARIMA(0,1,1) process that is being adjusted automatically after each observation using a minimum mean squared error adjustment policy. It is assumed that a special cause can change the process mean and the process variance. We derive expressions for the process deviation from target for a variety of different process parameter changes, and introduce a control chart, based on the generalized likelihood ratio, for detecting special causes. We also propose the integrated process control scheme bases on the future loss. The future loss denotes the cost that will be incurred in a process remaining interval from a true out-of-control signal.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 1999

It is difficult to keep the balance of supply and demand for natural aggregates in recent years, because natural resources have become to be almost exhausted. Crushed stone is already used for coarse aggregate instead of river gravel at present. Now, crushed sand or sea sand should be used for fine aggregate, because natural sand also has been exhausted with a few exceptions around Nakdong River. The sea sand has a lot of problems which are the corrosion of reinforcement bars, the investment of facility for cleansing salt and the cost increase due to the insufficiency of industrial water. Therefore, it is necessary to produce and to utilize the crushed sand very actively, but some material properties which are related to water absorption, strength and chemical durability, prevent from determining the generalized criteria because its rocks make much differences in its physical and chemical characteristics. In this paper, fundamental physical properties of crushed sand, which comes from Daegu Subway construction fields, have been investigated for the usability on basic material of concrete. The optimum replacement ratio and the strength estimation method of crushed sand replacing natural sand also have been presented here through the compressive strength test of ready-mixed concrete cylinders.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.75-81
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• 2017

Purpose: Most contemporary office buildings supply external views, a sense of openness and a sense of time to their occupants by adopting the curtain walls, which are equipped with an outer cover having large window area. As a result, the amount of radiation increases, adversely affecting cooling load during the summer in office buildings. Although solar radiation decreases heating load and reduces energy costs during the winter period, due to the characteristics of offices where occupants work largely during daytime, the cooling load is important compared to the heating. Therefore, diverse measures to resolve those trade-offs and annual energy cost have been investigated. Method: In this study, the annual thermal load was comparatively analyzed according to the slat angle of the venetian blind along with lighting control technique. Result: After selecting effective conditions, in order to resolve such issues, this study established automated control strategies of slat angle depending on the window-to-wall ratio and zone orientation, so that the findings of this study can be effectively generalized to other circumstances.