• Title/Summary/Keyword: Knowledge-based Services

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A Case Study on Forecasting Inbound Calls of Motor Insurance Company Using Interactive Data Mining Technique (대화식 데이터 마이닝 기법을 활용한 자동차 보험사의 인입 콜량 예측 사례)

  • Baek, Woong;Kim, Nam-Gyu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.99-120
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    • 2010
  • Due to the wide spread of customers' frequent access of non face-to-face services, there have been many attempts to improve customer satisfaction using huge amounts of data accumulated throughnon face-to-face channels. Usually, a call center is regarded to be one of the most representative non-faced channels. Therefore, it is important that a call center has enough agents to offer high level customer satisfaction. However, managing too many agents would increase the operational costs of a call center by increasing labor costs. Therefore, predicting and calculating the appropriate size of human resources of a call center is one of the most critical success factors of call center management. For this reason, most call centers are currently establishing a department of WFM(Work Force Management) to estimate the appropriate number of agents and to direct much effort to predict the volume of inbound calls. In real world applications, inbound call prediction is usually performed based on the intuition and experience of a domain expert. In other words, a domain expert usually predicts the volume of calls by calculating the average call of some periods and adjusting the average according tohis/her subjective estimation. However, this kind of approach has radical limitations in that the result of prediction might be strongly affected by the expert's personal experience and competence. It is often the case that a domain expert may predict inbound calls quite differently from anotherif the two experts have mutually different opinions on selecting influential variables and priorities among the variables. Moreover, it is almost impossible to logically clarify the process of expert's subjective prediction. Currently, to overcome the limitations of subjective call prediction, most call centers are adopting a WFMS(Workforce Management System) package in which expert's best practices are systemized. With WFMS, a user can predict the volume of calls by calculating the average call of each day of the week, excluding some eventful days. However, WFMS costs too much capital during the early stage of system establishment. Moreover, it is hard to reflect new information ontothe system when some factors affecting the amount of calls have been changed. In this paper, we attempt to devise a new model for predicting inbound calls that is not only based on theoretical background but also easily applicable to real world applications. Our model was mainly developed by the interactive decision tree technique, one of the most popular techniques in data mining. Therefore, we expect that our model can predict inbound calls automatically based on historical data, and it can utilize expert's domain knowledge during the process of tree construction. To analyze the accuracy of our model, we performed intensive experiments on a real case of one of the largest car insurance companies in Korea. In the case study, the prediction accuracy of the devised two models and traditional WFMS are analyzed with respect to the various error rates allowable. The experiments reveal that our data mining-based two models outperform WFMS in terms of predicting the amount of accident calls and fault calls in most experimental situations examined.

Export Prediction Using Separated Learning Method and Recommendation of Potential Export Countries (분리학습 모델을 이용한 수출액 예측 및 수출 유망국가 추천)

  • Jang, Yeongjin;Won, Jongkwan;Lee, Chaerok
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.28 no.1
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    • pp.69-88
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    • 2022
  • One of the characteristics of South Korea's economic structure is that it is highly dependent on exports. Thus, many businesses are closely related to the global economy and diplomatic situation. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) specialized in exporting are struggling due to the spread of COVID-19. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a model to forecast exports for next year to support SMEs' export strategy and decision making. Also, this study proposed a strategy to recommend promising export countries of each item based on the forecasting model. We analyzed important variables used in previous studies such as country-specific, item-specific, and macro-economic variables and collected those variables to train our prediction model. Next, through the exploratory data analysis(EDA) it was found that exports, which is a target variable, have a highly skewed distribution. To deal with this issue and improve predictive performance, we suggest a separated learning method. In a separated learning method, the whole dataset is divided into homogeneous subgroups and a prediction algorithm is applied to each group. Thus, characteristics of each group can be more precisely trained using different input variables and algorithms. In this study, we divided the dataset into five subgroups based on the exports to decrease skewness of the target variable. After the separation, we found that each group has different characteristics in countries and goods. For example, In Group 1, most of the exporting countries are developing countries and the majority of exporting goods are low value products such as glass and prints. On the other hand, major exporting countries of South Korea such as China, USA, and Vietnam are included in Group 4 and Group 5 and most exporting goods in these groups are high value products. Then we used LightGBM(LGBM) and Exponential Moving Average(EMA) for prediction. Considering the characteristics of each group, models were built using LGBM for Group 1 to 4 and EMA for Group 5. To evaluate the performance of the model, we compare different model structures and algorithms. As a result, it was found that the separated learning model had best performance compared to other models. After the model was built, we also provided variable importance of each group using SHAP-value to add explainability of our model. Based on the prediction model, we proposed a second-stage recommendation strategy for potential export countries. In the first phase, BCG matrix was used to find Star and Question Mark markets that are expected to grow rapidly. In the second phase, we calculated scores for each country and recommendations were made according to ranking. Using this recommendation framework, potential export countries were selected and information about those countries for each item was presented. There are several implications of this study. First of all, most of the preceding studies have conducted research on the specific situation or country. However, this study use various variables and develops a machine learning model for a wide range of countries and items. Second, as to our knowledge, it is the first attempt to adopt a separated learning method for exports prediction. By separating the dataset into 5 homogeneous subgroups, we could enhance the predictive performance of the model. Also, more detailed explanation of models by group is provided using SHAP values. Lastly, this study has several practical implications. There are some platforms which serve trade information including KOTRA, but most of them are based on past data. Therefore, it is not easy for companies to predict future trends. By utilizing the model and recommendation strategy in this research, trade related services in each platform can be improved so that companies including SMEs can fully utilize the service when making strategies and decisions for exports.

A Study on the Mobile Medical Service Program -Based on the Community Diagnosis of a Remote Farm Area- (순회진료사업(巡回診療事業)의 문제점(問題点)과 개선방향(改善方向) (일부(一部) 무의지역에 대(對)한 지역사진단(地域社診斷)을 중심(中心)으로))

  • Park, Hung-Bae;Choi, Dong-Wook
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.86-97
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    • 1978
  • The mobile medical service has been operated for many years by a number of medical schools and hospitals as a most convenient means of medical service delivery to the people residing in such area where the geographical and socioeconomic conditions are not good enough to enjoy modern medical care. Despite of official appraisal showing off simply with numbers of outpatients treated and medical persons participated, however, as well recognized, the capability (in respect of budget, equipment and time) of those mobile medical teams is so limitted that it often discourages the recipients as well as medical participants themselves. In the midst of rising need to secure medical service of good quality to all parts of the country, and of developing concept of primary health care system, authors evaluated the effectiveness of and problems associated with mobile medical servies program through the community diagnosis of a village (Opo-myun, Kwangju-gun) to obtain the information which may be halpful for future improvement. 1. Owing to the nationwide Sae-Maul movement powerfully practiced during last several years, living environment of farm villages generally and remarkably improved including houses, water supply and wastes disposal etc. Neverthless, due to limitations in budget time and lack of knowledge (probably the most important), these improvements tend to keep up appearances only and are far from the goal which may being practical benefit in promoting the health of the community. 2. As a result of intensive population policy led by the government since 1962, there has been considerable advances in understanding and the rate of practicing family planning through out the villages and yet, one should see many things, especially education, to be done. Fifty eight per cent of mothers have not received prenatal check and the care for most (72%) delivery was offered by laymen at home. 3. Approximately seven per cent of the population was reported to have chronic illness but since only a few (practically none) of the people has had physical check up by doctors, the actual prevalence of chronic diseases may reach many times of the reported. The same fact was observed also in prevalence of tuberculosis; the patients registered at local health center totaled 31 comprising only 0.51% while the numbers in two neighboring villages (designated as demonstration area of tuberculosis control and mass examination was done recently) were 3.5 and 4.0% respectively. Prevalence rate of all dieseses and injuries expereinced during one month (July, 1977) was 15.8%. Only one tenth of those patients received treatment by physicians and one fifth was not treated at all. The situation was worse as for the chronic patients; 84% of all cases either have never been treated or discontinued therapy, and the main reasons were known to be financial difficulty and ignorance or indifference. 4. Among the patients treated by our mobile clinic, one third was chronic cases and 45% of all patients, by the opinion of doctors attended, were those who may be treated by specially trained nurses or other paramedics (objects of primary care). Besides, 20% of the cases required professional managements of level beyond the mobile team's capability and in this sense one may conclude that the effectiveness (performance) of present mobile medical team is quite limitted. According to above findings, the authors would like to suggest following for mobile medical service and overall medicare program for the people living in remote country side. 1. Establishment of primary health care system secured with effective communication and evacuation (between villages and local medical center) measures. 2. Nationwide enforcement of medical insurance system. 3. Simple outpatient care which now constitutes the main part of the most mobile medical services should largely be yielded up to primary health care unit of the village and the mobile team itself should be assigned on new and more urgent missions such as mass screening health examination of the villagers, health education with modern and effective audiovisual aids, professional training and consultant services for the primary health care organization.

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Dieticians' Perceived Performance Level and Obstructive Factors of HACCP System among Elementary School Food Services in Gyeongbuk Province (경북지역 초등학교 영양(교)사의 학교급식 HACCP 시스템 수행 수준 및 장애요인 인식)

  • Yang, Ji Hye;Sung, Bo Mi;Kim, Mi Hwa;Jung, Hyun Sook;Cha, Myeong Hwa;Ryu, Kyung
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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    • v.43 no.11
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    • pp.1774-1784
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    • 2014
  • The purpose of this study was to determine obstructive factors and performance level of the HACCP system among elementary schools in Gyeongbuk province. E-mail survey targeted 320 dieticians, and recovery rate was 74.1%. Consequently, 227 responses were analyzed. The questionnaire was composed of 58 items under four sections (general characteristics, dieticians' perceived HACCP performance level, dieticians' perceived CCP performance level, and obstructive factors of HACCP system implementation). The item with the highest rate of HACCP performance level was 'HACCP training for foodservice employees in schools ($4.02{\pm}0.70$)' while the lowest counterpart was 'implementation of HACCP team meeting, reporting, and maintenance ($2.74{\pm}0.99$)'. The performance level of the item 'HACCP training for foodservice employees in schools' was perceived as highest when the number of students eating school meals was greater than 1,101 (P<0.05). Moreover, CCP 4 ($4.44{\pm}0.53$) and CP 5 ($4.44{\pm}0.51$) showed the best performance, whereas CCP 1 showed the lowest performance level ($3.90{\pm}0.60$). Therefore, reinforcement of hygiene instruction in menu planning is perceived as necessary. CCP 1, CCP 6 (P<0.05), and CCP 3 (P<0.001) showed significant differences in performance based on the number of students eating school meals. Further, according to results regarding obstructive factors of HACCP system execution, 'general factor' was the most severe obstructive factor in the application of HACCP ($3.46{\pm}0.62$). Among the 'factors pertaining to dieticians', the item 'hardship of proper monitoring and micro-management due to overwhelming workload' was most influential ($3.46{\pm}0.96$). Furthermore, the item 'low budget allocation by educational offices ($3.90{\pm}0.88$)' was influential among the 'factors pertaining to school administrations'. In conclusion, the results of this research can help solve obstructive factors of elementary school food services and provide knowledge that is essential for the proper implementation of HACCP.

A Study on the Outlook of Dentists on Dental Coordinators and Their Job (치과의사의 치과 코디네이터 업무 및 인식에 관한 조사연구)

  • Yoo, Jung-Sook;Jang, Mi-Hwa;Jung, Jae-Yeon;Cho, Myung-Sook;Choi, Bu-Geun;Hwang, Yoon-Sook
    • Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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    • v.5 no.2
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    • pp.201-218
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    • 2005
  • The purpose of this study was to examine how dentists perceived dental coordinators including their education, hiring criteria, working condition and job. It's basically attempted to help define the job and role of 5 and to suggest how they should be nurtured. The subjects in this study were dentists at dental hospitals and clinics where dental coordinators were employed among approximately 200 dental institutions in Seoul, Cyeonggi province and Incheon. After a survey was conducted in June 2005, answer sheets from 99 respondents were analyzed. The findings of the study were as follows: 1. Regarding education for dental coordinators, 99.9% of the dentists investigated felt the need for separate education programs for dental coordinators, 42.4% knew what would-be dental coordinators learned about, and 81.8% considered it necessary for them to take intermediate or higher courses. An organization affiliated with the Korea Dental Hygienists Association was viewed as the best institute to educate dental coordinators, and educational institutes that included a department of dental hygiene was looked upon as the second best one. 68.7% believed that dental coordinators should take an official examination to test their qualifications, and concerning educational subsidy, the largest group of the dentists thought that a certain amount of subsidy should be provided. 2. As for coordinator hiring, the top priority was the impression(look) of applicants(55%), followed by adjustability to existing employees(24.5%) and professional competency(17.3%). As to the route of hiring, 41.4 percent, the largest group, reeducated some of existing employees, and dental hygienists were regarded as the best personnels to serve as a coordinator. Concerning job performance, they put the most emphasis on interpersonal relationship, which was followed by executive ability, impression and career, 58.6% the largest group, believed that dental coordinators should have a three-year or higher career to work at a dental institute. 3. As to working conditions, 75.7%, the largest group, paid dental coordinators based on their job performance, and 23.2%, the second largest group, had their pay equal to that of dental hygienists, 88.9% allowed them to determine their own retirement age. 4. In regard to their perception of dental coordinators, the largest number of the dentists considered it necessary for them to keep receiving education(4.29), and the second largest group felt that they served to enhance the image of dental institutes(4.18). The third largest group thought that they contributed to letting patients more satisfied with the quality of dental services. But they tended not to agree that their turnover rate was low(3.04), and they didn't find them to receive appropriate education, either(3.10). 5. The current major job of coordinators associated with customer services was handling appointments with customers(91.9%), treating unsatisfied customers(85.9%), and controling waiting time(84.8%). Regarding self-management, coordinators directed their energy into having good manners(89.9%), acquiring fundamental dental knowledge(84.8%), and learning how to treat customers(83.8%). Concerning hospital affairs handling, they were most responsible for information desk(87.9%), which was followed by receiving(86.9%). As a result of investigating what type of job the dentists hoped dental coordinators to fulfill in consideration of their career, their age and type of investment, the dentists wanted them the most to speak a foreign language, which belonged to the field of self-management.

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Retail Product Development and Brand Management Collaboration between Industry and University Student Teams (산업여대학학생단대지간적령수산품개발화품패관리협작(产业与大学学生团队之间的零售产品开发和品牌管理协作))

  • Carroll, Katherine Emma
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.239-248
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    • 2010
  • This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.

An Analytical Approach Using Topic Mining for Improving the Service Quality of Hotels (호텔 산업의 서비스 품질 향상을 위한 토픽 마이닝 기반 분석 방법)

  • Moon, Hyun Sil;Sung, David;Kim, Jae Kyeong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.21-41
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    • 2019
  • Thanks to the rapid development of information technologies, the data available on Internet have grown rapidly. In this era of big data, many studies have attempted to offer insights and express the effects of data analysis. In the tourism and hospitality industry, many firms and studies in the era of big data have paid attention to online reviews on social media because of their large influence over customers. As tourism is an information-intensive industry, the effect of these information networks on social media platforms is more remarkable compared to any other types of media. However, there are some limitations to the improvements in service quality that can be made based on opinions on social media platforms. Users on social media platforms represent their opinions as text, images, and so on. Raw data sets from these reviews are unstructured. Moreover, these data sets are too big to extract new information and hidden knowledge by human competences. To use them for business intelligence and analytics applications, proper big data techniques like Natural Language Processing and data mining techniques are needed. This study suggests an analytical approach to directly yield insights from these reviews to improve the service quality of hotels. Our proposed approach consists of topic mining to extract topics contained in the reviews and the decision tree modeling to explain the relationship between topics and ratings. Topic mining refers to a method for finding a group of words from a collection of documents that represents a document. Among several topic mining methods, we adopted the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, which is considered as the most universal algorithm. However, LDA is not enough to find insights that can improve service quality because it cannot find the relationship between topics and ratings. To overcome this limitation, we also use the Classification and Regression Tree method, which is a kind of decision tree technique. Through the CART method, we can find what topics are related to positive or negative ratings of a hotel and visualize the results. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the representation of an analytical approach for the improvement of hotel service quality from unstructured review data sets. Through experiments for four hotels in Hong Kong, we can find the strengths and weaknesses of services for each hotel and suggest improvements to aid in customer satisfaction. Especially from positive reviews, we find what these hotels should maintain for service quality. For example, compared with the other hotels, a hotel has a good location and room condition which are extracted from positive reviews for it. In contrast, we also find what they should modify in their services from negative reviews. For example, a hotel should improve room condition related to soundproof. These results mean that our approach is useful in finding some insights for the service quality of hotels. That is, from the enormous size of review data, our approach can provide practical suggestions for hotel managers to improve their service quality. In the past, studies for improving service quality relied on surveys or interviews of customers. However, these methods are often costly and time consuming and the results may be biased by biased sampling or untrustworthy answers. The proposed approach directly obtains honest feedback from customers' online reviews and draws some insights through a type of big data analysis. So it will be a more useful tool to overcome the limitations of surveys or interviews. Moreover, our approach easily obtains the service quality information of other hotels or services in the tourism industry because it needs only open online reviews and ratings as input data. Furthermore, the performance of our approach will be better if other structured and unstructured data sources are added.

An Intervention Study on Integration of Family Planning and Maternal/Infant Care Services in Rural Korea (가족계획과 모자보건 통합을 위한 조산원의 투입효과 분석 -서산지역의 개입연구 평가보고-)

  • Bang, Sook;Han, Seung-Hyun;Lee, Chung-Ja;Ahn, Moon-Young;Lee, In-Sook;Kim, Eun-Shil;Kim, Chong-Ho
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.20 no.1 s.21
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    • pp.165-203
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    • 1987
  • This project was a service-cum-research effort with a quasi-experimental study design to examine the health benefits of an integrated Family Planning (FP)/Maternal & Child health (MCH) Service approach that provides crucial factors missing in the present on-going programs. The specific objectives were: 1) To test the effectiveness of trained nurse/midwives (MW) assigned as change agents in the Health Sub-Center (HSC) to bring about the changes in the eight FP/MCH indicators, namely; (i)FP/MCH contacts between field workers and their clients (ii) the use of effective FP methods, (iii) the inter-birth interval and/or open interval, (iv) prenatal care by medically qualified personnel, (v) medically supervised deliveries, (vi) the rate of induced abortion, (vii) maternal and infant morbidity, and (viii) preinatal & infant mortality. 2) To measure the integrative linkage (contacts) between MW & HSC workers and between HSC and clients. 3) To examine the organizational or administrative factors influencing integrative linkage between health workers. Study design; The above objectives called for quasi-experimental design setting up a study and control area with and without a midwife. An active intervention program (FP/MCH minimum 'package' program) was conducted for a 2 year period from June 1982-July 1984 in Seosan County and 'before and after' surveys were conducted to measure the change. Service input; This study was undertaken by the Soonchunhyang University in collaboration with WHO. After a baseline survery in 1981, trained nurses/midwives were introduced into two health sub-centers in a rural setting (Seosan county) for a 2 year period from 1982 to 1984. A major service input was the establishment of midwifery services in the existing health delivery system with emphasis on nurse/midwife's role as the link between health workers (nurse aids) and village health workers, and the referral of risk patients to the private physician (OBGY specialist). An evaluation survey was made in August 1984 to assess the effectiveness of this alternative integrated approach in the study areas in comparison with the control area which had normal government services. Method of evaluation; a. In this study, the primary objective was first to examine to what extent the FP/MCH package program brought about changes in the pre-determined eight indicators (outcome and impact measures) and the following relationship was first analyzed; b. Nevertheless, this project did not automatically accept the assumption that if two or more activities were integrated, the results would automatically be better than a non-integrated or categorical program. There is a need to assess the 'integration process' itself within the package program. The process of integration was measured in terms of interactive linkages, or the quantity & quality of contacts between workers & clients and among workers. Intergrative linkages were hypothesized to be influenced by organizational factors at the HSC clinic level including HSC goals, sltrurture, authority, leadership style, resources, and personal characteristics of HSC staff. The extent or degree of integration, as measured by the intensity of integrative linkages, was in turn presumed to influence programme performance. Thus as indicated diagrammatically below, organizational factors constituted the independent variables, integration as the intervening variable and programme performance with respect to family planning and health services as the dependent variable: Concerning organizational factors, however, due to the limited number of HSCs (2 in the study area and 3 in the control area), they were studied by participatory observation of an anthropologist who was independent of the project. In this observation, we examined whether the assumed integration process actually occurred or not. If not, what were the constraints in producing an effective integration process. Summary of Findings; A) Program effects and impact 1. Effects on FP use: During this 2 year action period, FP acceptance increased from 58% in 1981 to 78% in 1984 in both the study and control areas. This increase in both areas was mainly due to the new family planning campaign driven by the Government for the same study period. Therefore, there was no increment of FP acceptance rate due to additional input of MW to the on-going FP program. But in the study area, quality aspects of FP were somewhat improved, having a better continuation rate of IUDs & pills and more use of effective Contraceptive methods in comparison with the control area. 2. Effects of use of MCH services: Between the study and control areas, however, there was a significant difference in maternal and child health care. For example, the coverage of prenatal care was increased from 53% for 1981 birth cohort to 75% for 1984 birth cohort in the study area. In the control area, the same increased from 41% (1981) to 65% (1984). It is noteworthy that almost two thirds of the recent birth cohort received prenatal care even in the control area, indicating that there is a growing demand of MCH care as the size of family norm becomes smaller 3. There has been a substantive increase in delivery care by medical professions in the study area, with an annual increase rate of 10% due to midwives input in the study areas. The project had about two times greater effect on postnatal care (68% vs. 33%) at delivery care(45.2% vs. 26.1%). 4. The study area had better reproductive efficiency (wanted pregancies with FP practice & healthy live births survived by one year old) than the control area, especially among women under 30 (14.1% vs. 9.6%). The proportion of women who preferred the 1st trimester for their first prenatal care rose significantly in the study area as compared to the control area (24% vs 13%). B) Effects on Interactive Linkage 1. This project made a contribution in making several useful steps in the direction of service integration, namely; i) The health workers have become familiar with procedures on how to work together with each other (especially with a midwife) in carrying out their work in FP/MCH and, ii) The health workers have gotten a feeling of the usefulness of family health records (statistical integration) in identifying targets in their own work and their usefulness in caring for family health. 2. On the other hand, because of a lack of required organizational factors, complete linkage was not obtained as the project intended. i) In regards to the government health worker's activities in terms of home visiting there was not much difference between the study & control areas though the MW did more home visiting than Government health workers. ii) In assessing the service performance of MW & health workers, the midwives balanced their workload between 40% FP, 40% MCH & 20% other activities (mainly immunization). However, $85{\sim}90%$ of the services provided by the health workers were other than FP/MCH, mainly for immunizations such as the encephalitis campaign. In the control area, a similar pattern was observed. Over 75% of their service was other than FP/MCH. Therefore, the pattern shows the health workers are a long way from becoming multipurpose workers even though the government is pushing in this direction. 3. Villagers were much more likely to visit the health sub-center clinic in the study area than in the control area (58% vs.31%) and for more combined care (45% vs.23%). C) Organization factors (admistrative integrative issues) 1. When MW (new workers with higher qualification) were introduced to HSC, it was noted that there were conflicts between the existing HSC workers (Nurse aids with less qualification than MW) and the MW for the beginning period of the project. The cause of the conflict was studied by an anthropologist and it was pointed out that these functional integration problems stemmed from the structural inadequacies of the health subcenter organization as indicated below; i) There is still no general consensus about the objectives and goals of the project between the project staff and the existing health workers. ii) There is no formal linkage between the responsibility of each member's job in the health sub-center. iii) There is still little chance for midwives to play a catalytic role or to establish communicative networks between workers in order to link various knowledge and skills to provide better FP/MCH services in the health sub-center. 2. Based on the above findings the project recommended to the County Chief (who has power to control the administrative staff and the technical staff in his county) the following ; i) In order to solve the conflicts between the individual roles and functions in performing health care activities, there must be goals agreed upon by both. ii) The health sub·center must function as an autonomous organization to undertake the integration health project. In order to do that, it is necessary to support administrative considerations, and to establish a communication system for supervision and to control of the health sub-centers. iii) The administrative organization, tentatively, must be organized to bind the health worker's midwive's and director's jobs by an organic relationship in order to achieve the integrative system under the leadership of health sub-center director. After submitting this observation report, there has been better understanding from frequent meetings & communication between HW/MW in FP/MCH work as the program developed. Lessons learned from the Seosan Project (on issues of FP/MCH integration in Korea); 1) A majority or about 80% of the couples are now practicing FP. As indicated by the study, there is a growing demand from clients for the health system to provide more MCH services than FP in order to maintain the achieved small size of family through FP practice. It is fortunate to see that the government is now formulating a MCH policy for the year 2,000 and revising MCH laws and regulations to emphasize more MCH care for achieving a small size family through family planning practice. 2) Goal consensus in FP/MCH shouBd be made among the health workers It administrators, especially to emphasize the need of care of 'wanted' child. But there is a long way to go to realize the 'real' integration of FP into MCH in Korea, unless there is a structural integration FP/MCH because a categorical FP is still first priority to reduce the rate of population growth for economic reasons but not yet for health/welfare reasons in practice. 3) There should be more financial allocation: (i) a midwife should be made available to help to promote the MCH program and coordinate services, (in) there should be a health sub·center director who can provide leadership training for managing the integrated program. There is a need for 'organizational support', if the decision of integration is made to obtain benefit from both FP & MCH. In other words, costs should be paid equally to both FP/MCH. The integration slogan itself, without the commitment of paying such costs, is powerless to advocate it. 4) Need of management training for middle level health personnel is more acute as the Government has already constructed 90 MCH centers attached to the County Health Center but without adequate manpower, facilities, and guidelines for integrating the work of both FP and MCH. 5) The local government still considers these MCH centers only as delivery centers to take care only of those visiting maternity cases. The MCH center should be a center for the managment of all pregnancies occurring in the community and the promotion of FP with a systematic and effective linkage of resources available in the county such as i.e. Village Health Worker, Community Health Practitioner, Health Sub-center Physicians & Health workers, Doctors and Midwives in MCH center, OBGY Specialists in clinics & hospitals as practiced by the Seosan project at primary health care level.

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A Study on Major Safety Problems and Improvement Measures of Personal Mobility (개인형 이동장치의 안전 주요 문제점 및 개선방안 연구)

  • Kang, Seung Shik;Kang, Seong Kyung
    • Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.202-217
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    • 2022
  • Purpose: The recent increased use of Personal Mobility (PM) has been accompanied by a rise in the annual number of accidents. Accordingly, the safety requirements for PM use are being strengthened, but the laws/systems, infrastructure, and management systems remain insufficient for fostering a safe environment. Therefore, this study comprehensively searches the main problems and improvement methods through a review of previous studies that are related to PM. Then the priorities according to the importance of the improvement methods are presented through the Delphi survey. Method: The research method is mainly composed of a literature study and an expert survey (Delphi survey). Prior research and improvement cases (local governments, government departments, companies, etc.) are reviewed to derive problems and improvements, and a problem/improvement classification table is created based on keywords. Based on the classification contents, an expert survey is conducted to derive a priority improvement plan. Result: The PM-related problems were in 'non-compliance with traffic laws, lack of knowledge, inexperienced operation, and lack of safety awareness' in relation to human factors, and 'device characteristics, road-drivable space, road facilities, parking facilities' in relation to physical factors. 'Management/supervision, product management, user management, education/training' as administrative factors and legal factors are divided into 'absence/sufficiency of law, confusion/duplication, reduced effectiveness'. Improvement tasks related to this include 'PM education/public relations, parking/return, road improvement, PM registration/management, insurance, safety standards, traffic standards, PM device safety, PM supplementary facilities, enforcement/management, dedicated organization, service providers, management system, and related laws/institutional improvement', and 42 detailed tasks are derived for these 14 core tasks. The results for the importance evaluation of detailed tasks show that the tasks with a high overall average for the evaluation items of cost, time, effect, urgency, and feasibility were 'strengthening crackdown/instruction activities, education publicity/campaign, truancy PM management, and clarification of traffic rules'. Conclusion: The PM market is experiencing gradual growth based on shared services and a safe environment for PM use must be ensured along with industrial revitalization. In this respect, this study seeks out the major problems and improvement plans related to PM from a comprehensive point of view and prioritizes the necessary improvement measures. Therefore, it can serve as a basis of data for future policy establishment. In the future, in-depth data supplementation will be required for each key improvement area for practical policy application.

A Study on the Determinants of Patent Citation Relationships among Companies : MR-QAP Analysis (기업 간 특허인용 관계 결정요인에 관한 연구 : MR-QAP분석)

  • Park, Jun Hyung;Kwahk, Kee-Young;Han, Heejun;Kim, Yunjeong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.21-37
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    • 2013
  • Recently, as the advent of the knowledge-based society, there are more people getting interested in the intellectual property. Especially, the ICT companies leading the high-tech industry are working hard to strive for systematic management of intellectual property. As we know, the patent information represents the intellectual capital of the company. Also now the quantitative analysis on the continuously accumulated patent information becomes possible. The analysis at various levels becomes also possible by utilizing the patent information, ranging from the patent level to the enterprise level, industrial level and country level. Through the patent information, we can identify the technology status and analyze the impact of the performance. We are also able to find out the flow of the knowledge through the network analysis. By that, we can not only identify the changes in technology, but also predict the direction of the future research. In the field using the network analysis there are two important analyses which utilize the patent citation information; citation indicator analysis utilizing the frequency of the citation and network analysis based on the citation relationships. Furthermore, this study analyzes whether there are any impacts between the size of the company and patent citation relationships. 74 S&P 500 registered companies that provide IT and communication services are selected for this study. In order to determine the relationship of patent citation between the companies, the patent citation in 2009 and 2010 is collected and sociomatrices which show the patent citation relationship between the companies are created. In addition, the companies' total assets are collected as an index of company size. The distance between companies is defined as the absolute value of the difference between the total assets. And simple differences are considered to be described as the hierarchy of the company. The QAP Correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis is carried out by using the distance and hierarchy between companies, and also the sociomatrices that shows the patent citation in 2009 and 2010. Through the result of QAP Correlation analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies in the 2009's company's patent citation network and the 2010's company's patent citation network shows the highest correlation. In addition, positive correlation is shown in the patent citation relationships between companies and the distance between companies. This is because the patent citation relationship is increased when there is a difference of size between companies. Not only that, negative correlation is found through the analysis using the patent citation relationship between companies and the hierarchy between companies. Relatively it is indicated that there is a high evaluation about the patent of the higher tier companies influenced toward the lower tier companies. MR-QAP analysis is carried out as follow. The sociomatrix that is generated by using the year 2010 patent citation relationship is used as the dependent variable. Additionally the 2009's company's patent citation network and the distance and hierarchy networks between the companies are used as the independent variables. This study performed MR-QAP analysis to find the main factors influencing the patent citation relationship between the companies in 2010. The analysis results show that all independent variables have positively influenced the 2010's patent citation relationship between the companies. In particular, the 2009's patent citation relationship between the companies has the most significant impact on the 2010's, which means that there is consecutiveness regarding the patent citation relationships. Through the result of QAP correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies is affected by the size of the companies. But the most significant impact is the patent citation relationships that had been done in the past. The reason why we need to maintain the patent citation relationship between companies is it might be important in the use of strategic aspect of the companies to look into relationships to share intellectual property between each other, also seen as an important auxiliary of the partner companies to cooperate with.