• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.335-358
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• 2023

This study analyzed the characteristics of the learning organization according to its characteristics, the operation method and size of each public library. In addition, the service quality of public libraries was investigated so that it was also analyzed the correlation between the characteristics of the learning organization and the quality of the service. To achieve the research objectives, 83 librarians and 343 users across seven public libraries in South Korea's metropolitan areas were surveyed. The investigation covered various dimensions of learning organizations: creating continuous learning opportunities, promoting inquiry and dialogue, encouraging collaboration and team learning, creating systems to capture and share learning, empowering people toward a collective vision, connecting the organization to its environment, and providing strategic leadership for learning. Also it was investigated aspects of service quality: affect of service, information control, and library as place. As a result of the study, for the learning organization characteristics, more than 3.4 out of 5 were qualified to have foundation of learning organizations. One attempted to categorize according to its operational method and size and compare learning organization differences between public libraries, however it was not easy to see the clear differences. Therefore it was judged that there might be another unidentified factor which gives an affect on learning organization. Furthermore, it was found that there was a positive correlation between learning organization traits and service quality. This study might signify by looking into how the learning organization, which is one of the post-bureaucratic organizational traits, appears in public libraries.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.47-63
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• 2015

As knowledge is paid attention as a new production factor that generates added value, studies continue to apply knowledge management to business environment. In addition, as ICT (Information Communication Technology) was engrafted in business environment, it leads to increasing task efficiency and productivity of individual workers. Accordingly, the way that a business achieves its goal has changed to one in which its individual members are willing to take part in the organization and share information to create new values (Han, 2003) and studies for the system and service to support such transition are carrying out. Of late, a new concept called 'Enterprise 2.0' newly appears. It is the extension of Wen 2.0 and its technology, which focus on participation, sharing and openness, to the work environment of a business (Jung, 2013). Enterprise 2.0 is being used as a collaborative tool to prop up individual creativity and group brain power by combining Web 2.0 technologies such as blog, Wiki, RSS and tag with business software (McAfee, 2006). As Tweeter gets popular, Enterprise Microblog (EMB), which is an example of Enterprise 2.0 for business, has been developed as equivalent to Tweeter in business circle and SaaS (Software as a Service) such as Yammer was introduced The studies of EMB mainly focus on demonstrating its usability in terms of intra-firm communication and knowledge management. However existing studies lean too much towards large-sized companies and certain departments, rather than a company as a whole. Therefore, few studies have been conducted on small and medium-sized companies that have difficulty preparing separate resources and supplying exclusive workforce to introduce knowledge management. In this respect, the present study placed its analytic focus on small-sized companies actually equipped with EMB to know how they use it. And, based on the findings, this study examined their knowledge management strategies for EMB from the point of codification and personalization. Hypothesis -"as a company grows, it shifts EMB strategy from codification to personalization'- was established on the basis of reviewing precedent studies and literature. To demonstrate the hypothesis, this study analyzed the usage of EMB by small companies that have used it from foundation. For case study, the duration of the use was divided into 2 spans and longitudinal analysis was employed to examine the contents of the blogs. Using the key findings of the analysis, this study is aimed to propose practical implications for the operation of knowledge management of small-sized company and the suitable application of knowledge management system for operation Knowledge Management Strategy can be classified by codification strategy and personalization strategy (Hansen et. al., 1999), and how to manage the two strategies were always studied. Also, current studies regarding the knowledge management strategy were targeted mostly for major companies, resulting in lack of studies in how it can be applied on SMEs. This research, with the knowledge management strategy suited for SMEs, sets an Enterprise Microblog (EMB), and with the EMB applied on SMEs' Knowledge Management Strategy, it is reviewed on the perspective of SMEs' Codification and Personalization Strategies. Through the advanced research regarding Knowledge Management Strategy and EMB, the hypothesis is set that "Depending on the development of the company, the main application of EMB alters from Codification Strategy to Personalization Strategy". To check the hypothesis, SME that have used the EMB called 'Yammer' was analyzed from the date of their foundation until today. The case study has implemented longitudinal analysis which divides the period when the EMBs were used into three stages and analyzes the contents. As the result of the study, this suggests a substantial implication regarding the application of Knowledge Management Strategy and its Knowledge Management System that is suitable for SME.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.55-75
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• 2010

Sequential pattern mining aims to discover interesting sequential patterns in a sequence database, and it is one of the essential data mining tasks widely used in various application fields such as Web access pattern analysis, customer purchase pattern analysis, and DNA sequence analysis. In general sequential pattern mining, only the generation order of data element in a sequence is considered, so that it can easily find simple sequential patterns, but has a limit to find more interesting sequential patterns being widely used in real world applications. One of the essential research topics to compensate the limit is a topic of weighted sequential pattern mining. In weighted sequential pattern mining, not only the generation order of data element but also its weight is considered to get more interesting sequential patterns. In recent, data has been increasingly taking the form of continuous data streams rather than finite stored data sets in various application fields, the database research community has begun focusing its attention on processing over data streams. The data stream is a massive unbounded sequence of data elements continuously generated at a rapid rate. In data stream processing, each data element should be examined at most once to analyze the data stream, and the memory usage for data stream analysis should be restricted finitely although new data elements are continuously generated in a data stream. Moreover, newly generated data elements should be processed as fast as possible to produce the up-to-date analysis result of a data stream, so that it can be instantly utilized upon request. To satisfy these requirements, data stream processing sacrifices the correctness of its analysis result by allowing some error. Considering the changes in the form of data generated in real world application fields, many researches have been actively performed to find various kinds of knowledge embedded in data streams. They mainly focus on efficient mining of frequent itemsets and sequential patterns over data streams, which have been proven to be useful in conventional data mining for a finite data set. In addition, mining algorithms have also been proposed to efficiently reflect the changes of data streams over time into their mining results. However, they have been targeting on finding naively interesting patterns such as frequent patterns and simple sequential patterns, which are found intuitively, taking no interest in mining novel interesting patterns that express the characteristics of target data streams better. Therefore, it can be a valuable research topic in the field of mining data streams to define novel interesting patterns and develop a mining method finding the novel patterns, which will be effectively used to analyze recent data streams. This paper proposes a gap-based weighting approach for a sequential pattern and amining method of weighted sequential patterns over sequence data streams via the weighting approach. A gap-based weight of a sequential pattern can be computed from the gaps of data elements in the sequential pattern without any pre-defined weight information. That is, in the approach, the gaps of data elements in each sequential pattern as well as their generation orders are used to get the weight of the sequential pattern, therefore it can help to get more interesting and useful sequential patterns. Recently most of computer application fields generate data as a form of data streams rather than a finite data set. Considering the change of data, the proposed method is mainly focus on sequence data streams.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.221-238
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• 2019

Recently, companies and public institutions have been actively introducing chatbot services in the field of customer counseling and response. The introduction of the chatbot service not only brings labor cost savings to companies and organizations, but also enables rapid communication with customers. Advances in data analytics and artificial intelligence are driving the growth of these chatbot services. The current chatbot can understand users' questions and offer the most appropriate answers to questions through machine learning and deep learning. The advancement of chatbot core technologies such as NLP, NLU, and NLG has made it possible to understand words, understand paragraphs, understand meanings, and understand emotions. For this reason, the value of chatbots continues to rise. However, technology-oriented chatbots can be inconsistent with what users want inherently, so chatbots need to be addressed in the area of the user experience, not just in the area of technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents the importance of the User Experience as well as the advancement of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, and IoT technologies. The development of IT technology and the importance of user experience have provided people with a variety of environments and changed lifestyles. This means that experiences in interactions with people, services(products) and the environment become very important. Therefore, it is time to develop a user needs-based services(products) that can provide new experiences and values to people. This study proposes a chatbot development process based on user needs by applying the design thinking approach, a representative methodology in the field of user experience, to chatbot development. The process proposed in this study consists of four steps. The first step is 'setting up knowledge domain' to set up the chatbot's expertise. Accumulating the information corresponding to the configured domain and deriving the insight is the second step, 'Knowledge accumulation and Insight identification'. The third step is 'Opportunity Development and Prototyping'. It is going to start full-scale development at this stage. Finally, the 'User Feedback' step is to receive feedback from users on the developed prototype. This creates a "user needs-based service (product)" that meets the process's objectives. Beginning with the fact gathering through user observation, Perform the process of abstraction to derive insights and explore opportunities. Next, it is expected to develop a chatbot that meets the user's needs through the process of materializing to structure the desired information and providing the function that fits the user's mental model. In this study, we present the actual construction examples for the domestic cosmetics market to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed process. The reason why it chose the domestic cosmetics market as its case is because it shows strong characteristics of users' experiences, so it can quickly understand responses from users. This study has a theoretical implication in that it proposed a new chatbot development process by incorporating the design thinking methodology into the chatbot development process. This research is different from the existing chatbot development research in that it focuses on user experience, not technology. It also has practical implications in that companies or institutions propose realistic methods that can be applied immediately. In particular, the process proposed in this study can be accessed and utilized by anyone, since 'user needs-based chatbots' can be developed even if they are not experts. This study suggests that further studies are needed because only one field of study was conducted. In addition to the cosmetics market, additional research should be conducted in various fields in which the user experience appears, such as the smart phone and the automotive market. Through this, it will be able to be reborn as a general process necessary for 'development of chatbots centered on user experience, not technology centered'.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2015

Gyeongju, Silla capital, hasn't paid much attention to a value of fortress as advanced frame of landscape all the while. All have done until now were maintaining lots of fortress including Gyeongju and setting night landscape lighting for them or building a trail in mountain fortress. Hereupon, this study tried to take a look at historical and scenic value of fortress, landscape frame of Gyeongju-Silla capital, based on Wolseong and Myeonghwalseong and find the way to contribute to it on landscape architectural level. As Wolseong(月城) and Myeonghwalseong(明活城) functioned as royal palace in Silla Dynasty, they need some research and study on fortress inside in detail rather than restoring them by simply maintaining the shapes. While Wolseong has overall excavation investigation going on, Myeonghwalseong representing mountain fortress area is losing its value due to unbefitting management to a title of world heritage. If conducting close research and study on these remains, it seems like it could contribute a lot to landscape architectural research of Silla royal palace through tracks, which will be used as royal palace. Here I suggest research direction on landscape architectural level about fortress remains in Gyeongju area as followings. Firstly, away from all research focusing on fortress shape, consecration way, etc, we need to conduct a research comprisable of inner space of fortress. As Wolseong and Myeonghwalseong functioned as royal palace in Silla Dynasty, it'll be possible to research about ponds, Nu-Jeong(樓亭), drainage facilities, oddly shaped stones, moundings, pavements, circulation systems, planting traces, etc. For this, we need to research and study through comparison with cases of China, Japan and Goguryeo of the same age. Secondly, applying garden archaeological way is possible to translate objectively regarding research of ancient garden with low literature record. But attainable achievement and information will be limited if implementing excavation based on archaeology as excavations so far regarding excavation investigation of Wolseong. The alternative to such problem is participation plan of landscaping field through the foundation of garden archaeology. We might be able to attain many results on landscape architectural level from research, if conducting research and study about Silla capital including Wolseong by applying garden archaeology such as collection of environmental sample and discovery and analysis of remains through aerial photograph, archaeological research, analysis of historical building, surface exploration, excavation technique, analysis of soil and flowerpot, etc. For this, many people majored in landscape architecture need to try and acquire archaeological knowledge. Also, we need to call attention to internal garden archaeology through international academic symposium by inviting global experts in garden archaeology field. I've suggested the study of location of Wolseong and Silla fortress in Gyeongju area, plan research on using and treating trees about the space in and out of fortress and landscape architectural research direction of Wolseong fortress.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.171-183
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• 2012

In the development of technologies, the exhibition industry has received much attention from governments and companies as an important way of marketing activities. Also, the exhibitors have considered the exhibition as new channels of marketing activities. However, the growing size of exhibitions for net square feet and the number of visitors naturally creates the competitive environment for them. Therefore, to make use of the effective marketing tools in these environments, they have planned and implemented many promotion technics. Especially, through smart environment which makes them provide real-time information for visitors, they can implement various kinds of promotion. However, promotions ignoring visitors' various needs and preferences can lose the original purposes and functions of them. That is, as indiscriminate promotions make visitors feel like spam, they can't achieve their purposes. Therefore, they need an approach using STP strategy which segments visitors through right evidences (Segmentation), selects the target visitors (Targeting), and give proper services to them (Positioning). For using STP Strategy in the smart exhibition environment, we consider these characteristics of it. First, an exhibition is defined as market events of a specific duration, which are held at intervals. According to this, exhibitors who plan some promotions should different events and promotions in each exhibition. Therefore, when they adopt traditional STP strategies, a system can provide services using insufficient information and of existing visitors, and should guarantee the performance of it. Second, to segment automatically, cluster analysis which is generally used as data mining technology can be adopted. In the smart exhibition environment, information of visitors can be acquired in real-time. At the same time, services using this information should be also provided in real-time. However, many clustering algorithms have scalability problem which they hardly work on a large database and require for domain knowledge to determine input parameters. Therefore, through selecting a suitable methodology and fitting, it should provide real-time services. Finally, it is needed to make use of data in the smart exhibition environment. As there are useful data such as booth visit records and participation records for events, the STP strategy for the smart exhibition is based on not only demographical segmentation but also behavioral segmentation. Therefore, in this study, we analyze a case of the promotion methodology which exhibitors can provide a differentiated service to segmented visitors in the smart exhibition environment. First, considering characteristics of the smart exhibition environment, we draw evidences of segmentation and fit the clustering methodology for providing real-time services. There are many studies for classify visitors, but we adopt a segmentation methodology based on visitors' behavioral traits. Through the direct observation, Veron and Levasseur classify visitors into four groups to liken visitors' traits to animals (Butterfly, fish, grasshopper, and ant). Especially, because variables of their classification like the number of visits and the average time of a visit can estimate in the smart exhibition environment, it can provide theoretical and practical background for our system. Next, we construct a pilot system which automatically selects suitable visitors along the objectives of promotions and instantly provide promotion messages to them. That is, based on the segmentation of our methodology, our system automatically selects suitable visitors along the characteristics of promotions. We adopt this system to real exhibition environment, and analyze data from results of adaptation. As a result, as we classify visitors into four types through their behavioral pattern in the exhibition, we provide some insights for researchers who build the smart exhibition environment and can gain promotion strategies fitting each cluster. First, visitors of ANT type show high response rate for promotion messages except experience promotion. So they are fascinated by actual profits in exhibition area, and dislike promotions requiring a long time. Contrastively, visitors of GRASSHOPPER type show high response rate only for experience promotion. Second, visitors of FISH type appear favors to coupon and contents promotions. That is, although they don't look in detail, they prefer to obtain further information such as brochure. Especially, exhibitors that want to give much information for limited time should give attention to visitors of this type. Consequently, these promotion strategies are expected to give exhibitors some insights when they plan and organize their activities, and grow the performance of them.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.79-96
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• 2012

As the pace of competition dramatically accelerates and the complexity of change grows, a variety of research have been conducted to improve firms' short-term performance and to enhance firms' long-term survival. In particular, researchers and practitioners have paid their attention to identify promising technologies that lead competitive advantage to a firm. Discovery of promising technology depends on how a firm evaluates the value of technologies, thus many evaluating methods have been proposed. Experts' opinion based approaches have been widely accepted to predict the value of technologies. Whereas this approach provides in-depth analysis and ensures validity of analysis results, it is usually cost-and time-ineffective and is limited to qualitative evaluation. Considerable studies attempt to forecast the value of technology by using patent information to overcome the limitation of experts' opinion based approach. Patent based technology evaluation has served as a valuable assessment approach of the technological forecasting because it contains a full and practical description of technology with uniform structure. Furthermore, it provides information that is not divulged in any other sources. Although patent information based approach has contributed to our understanding of prediction of promising technologies, it has some limitations because prediction has been made based on the past patent information, and the interpretations of patent analyses are not consistent. In order to fill this gap, this study proposes a technology forecasting methodology by integrating patent information approach and artificial intelligence method. The methodology consists of three modules : evaluation of technologies promising, implementation of technologies value prediction model, and recommendation of promising technologies. In the first module, technologies promising is evaluated from three different and complementary dimensions; impact, fusion, and diffusion perspectives. The impact of technologies refers to their influence on future technologies development and improvement, and is also clearly associated with their monetary value. The fusion of technologies denotes the extent to which a technology fuses different technologies, and represents the breadth of search underlying the technology. The fusion of technologies can be calculated based on technology or patent, thus this study measures two types of fusion index; fusion index per technology and fusion index per patent. Finally, the diffusion of technologies denotes their degree of applicability across scientific and technological fields. In the same vein, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent are considered respectively. In the second module, technologies value prediction model is implemented using artificial intelligence method. This studies use the values of five indexes (i.e., impact index, fusion index per technology, fusion index per patent, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent) at different time (e.g., t-n, t-n-1, t-n-2, ${\cdots}$) as input variables. The out variables are values of five indexes at time t, which is used for learning. The learning method adopted in this study is backpropagation algorithm. In the third module, this study recommends final promising technologies based on analytic hierarchy process. AHP provides relative importance of each index, leading to final promising index for technology. Applicability of the proposed methodology is tested by using U.S. patents in international patent class G06F (i.e., electronic digital data processing) from 2000 to 2008. The results show that mean absolute error value for prediction produced by the proposed methodology is lower than the value produced by multiple regression analysis in cases of fusion indexes. However, mean absolute error value of the proposed methodology is slightly higher than the value of multiple regression analysis. These unexpected results may be explained, in part, by small number of patents. Since this study only uses patent data in class G06F, number of sample patent data is relatively small, leading to incomplete learning to satisfy complex artificial intelligence structure. In addition, fusion index per technology and impact index are found to be important criteria to predict promising technology. This study attempts to extend the existing knowledge by proposing a new methodology for prediction technology value by integrating patent information analysis and artificial intelligence network. It helps managers who want to technology develop planning and policy maker who want to implement technology policy by providing quantitative prediction methodology. In addition, this study could help other researchers by proving a deeper understanding of the complex technological forecasting field.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.123-127
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• 1978

The major objective of this research is to identify those hospital characteristics that best explain cost variation among hospitals and to formulate linear models that can predict hospital costs. Specific emphasis is placed on hospital output, that is, the identification of diagnosis related patient groups (DRGs) which are medically meaningful and demonstrate similar patterns of hospital resource consumption. A casemix index is developed based on the DRGs identified. Considering the common problems encountered in previous hospital cost research, the following study requirements are estab-lished for fulfilling the objectives of this research: 1. Selection of hospitals that exercise similar medical and fiscal practices. 2. Identification of an appropriate data collection mechanism in which demographic and medical characteristics of individual patients as well as accurate and comparable cost information can be derived. 3. Development of a patient classification system in which all the patients treated in hospitals are able to be split into mutually exclusive categories with consistent and stable patterns of resource consumption. 4. Development of a cost finding mechanism through which patient groups' costs can be made comparable across hospitals. A data set of Medicare patients prepared by the Social Security Administration was selected for the study analysis. The data set contained 27,229 record abstracts of Medicare patients discharged from all but one short-term general hospital in Connecticut during the period from January 1, 1971, to December 31, 1972. Each record abstract contained demographic and diagnostic information, as well as charges for specific medical services received. The 'AUT-OGRP System' was used to generate 198 DRGs in which the entire range of Medicare patients were split into mutually exclusive categories, each of which shows a consistent and stable pattern of resource consumption. The 'Departmental Method' was used to generate cost information for the groups of Medicare patients that would be comparable across hospitals. To fulfill the study objectives, an extensive analysis was conducted in the following areas: 1. Analysis of DRGs: in which the level of resource use of each DRG was determined, the length of stay or death rate of each DRG in relation to resource use was characterized, and underlying patterns of the relationships among DRG costs were explained. 2. Exploration of resource use profiles of hospitals; in which the magnitude of differences in the resource uses or death rates incurred in the treatment of Medicare patients among the study hospitals was explored. 3. Casemix analysis; in which four types of casemix-related indices were generated, and the significance of these indices in the explanation of hospital costs was examined. 4. Formulation of linear models to predict hospital costs of Medicare patients; in which nine independent variables (i. e., casemix index, hospital size, complexity of service, teaching activity, location, casemix-adjusted death. rate index, occupancy rate, and casemix-adjusted length of stay index) were used for determining factors in hospital costs. Results from the study analysis indicated that: 1. The system of 198 DRGs for Medicare patient classification was demonstrated not only as a strong tool for determining the pattern of hospital resource utilization of Medicare patients, but also for categorizing patients by their severity of illness. 2. The wei틴fed mean total case cost (TOTC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the study years was $11,27.02 with a standard deviation of $117.20. The hospital with the highest average TOTC ($1538.15) was 2.08 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average TOTC ($743.45). The weighted mean per diem total cost (DTOC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the sutdy years was $107.98 with a standard deviation of $15.18. The hospital with the highest average DTOC ($147.23) was 1.87 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average DTOC ($78.49). 3. The linear models for each of the six types of hospital costs were formulated using the casemix index and the eight other hospital variables as the determinants. These models explained variance to the extent of 68.7 percent of total case cost (TOTC), 63.5 percent of room and board cost (RMC), 66.2 percent of total ancillary service cost (TANC), 66.3 percent of per diem total cost (DTOC), 56.9 percent of per diem room and board cost (DRMC), and 65.5 percent of per diem ancillary service cost (DTANC). The casemix index alone explained approximately one half of interhospital cost variation: 59.1 percent for TOTC and 44.3 percent for DTOC. Thsee results demonstrate that the casemix index is the most importand determinant of interhospital cost variation Future research and policy implications in regard to the results of this study is envisioned in the following three areas: 1. Utilization of casemix related indices in the Medicare data systems. 2. Refinement of data for hospital cost evaluation. 3. Development of a system for reimbursement and cost control in hospitals.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.181-189
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• 2010

Purpose: Recently, health policy making is increasingly based on evidence. Therefore, Korean Terminal Cancer Patient Information System (KTCPIS) was developed to meet such need. We aimed to report its developmental process and statistics from 6 months data. Methods: Items for KTCPIS were developed through the consultation with practitioners. E-Velos web-based clinical trial management system was used as a technical platform. Data were collected for patients who were registered to 34 inpatient palliative care services, designated by Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs, from $1^{st}$ of January to $30^{th}$ of June in 2009. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis. Results: From the nationally representative set of 2,940 patients, we obtained the following results. Mean age was $64.8{\pm}12.9$ years, and 56.6% were male. Lung cancer (18.0%) was most common diagnosis. Only 50.3% of patients received the confirmation of terminal diagnosis by two or more physicians, and 69.7% had an insight of terminal diagnosis at the time of admission. About half of patients were admitted to the units on their own without any formal referral. Average and worst pain scores were significantly reduced after 1 week when compared to those at the time of admission. 73.4% faced death in the units, and home-discharge comprised only 13.3%. Mean length of stay per admission was $20.2{\pm}21.2$ days, with median value of 13. Conclusion: Nationally representative data on the characteristics of patients and their caregiver, and current practice of service delivery in palliative care units were obtained through the operation of KTCPIS.