• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.43-50
• /
• 2023

Background and Objective: With the advancement of cancer treatments and increased life expectancy, managing breakthrough cancer pain (BTcP) is essential to improve the quality of life for cancer patients. This study aimed to compare the major rapid onset opioids in Korea based on their characteristics and costs to determine the best option for each patient. Methods: Based on sales information from IQVIA-MIDAS, sublingual fentanyl tablet (SLF), fentanyl buccal tablet (FBT), and oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate (OTFC) were selected as the top three drugs for the treatment of BTcP in Korea, considering them the most comparable drugs. The cost and cost-pain relief ratio of the drugs for short-term (1 month) and long-term (1 year) treatment were compared and the ease of administration based on various factors, including pharmacokinetics, onset of action, and administration procedures were evaluated. Results: SLF was evaluated as the best overall in terms of rapid onset of action, ease of administration, and drug cost and also had the highest market share. SLF had the lowest cost pain relief ratio for both the initial and supplemental treatment for the 1-month pain intensity difference 15 (PID15) ratio. However, for the 1-month PID30 ratio, SLF was not superior to OTFC or FBT. The longer the breakthrough cancer pain duration, the more cost-effective the other rapid onset opioids. Conclusion: The rapid onset opioids that fit the patient's breakthrough cancer pain pattern have the best cost-effectiveness.

• Gut and Liver
• /
• v.12 no.6
• /
• pp.648-654
• /
• 2018

Background/Aims: Dual priming oligonucleotide-based multiplex polymerase chain reaction (DPO-based PCR) can detect the presence of clarithromycin resistance without culture. The aim of this study was to investigate the cost-effectiveness of DPO-based PCR for Helicobacter pylori eradication. Methods: From 2015 to 2016, medical records of patients who received H. pylori eradication therapy were analyzed. Patients were divided into two groups: tailored group patients who were treated based on DPO-based PCR and empirical group patients. Eradication rate and medical cost, including diagnostic tests, eradication regimens, and $^{13}C$-urea breath tests, were compared between the two groups. Cost for one successful eradication was calculated in each group. The expected cost of eradication for empirical treatment was investigated by varying the treatment duration and eradication rate. Results: A total of 527 patients were analyzed (tailored group 208, empirical group 319). The eradication success rate of the first-line therapy was higher in the tailored group compared to that in the empirical group (91.8% vs 72.1%, p<0.01). The total medical cost for each group was $114.8{\pm}14.1U.S.$ dollars (USD) and $85.8{\pm}24.4USD$, respectively (p<0.01). The total medical costs for each ultimately successful eradication in the tailored group and in the empirical group were 120.0 USD and 92.4 USD, respectively. The economic modeling expected cost of a successful eradication after a 7- or 14-day empirical treatment was 93.8 to 111.4 USD and 126.3 to 149.9 USD, respectively. Conclusions: Based on economic modeling, the cost for a successful eradication using DPO-based PCR would be similar or superior to the expected cost of a successful eradication with a 14-day empirical treatment when the first-line eradication rate is ${\leq}80%$.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.213-224
• /
• 2020

Purpose: This study is a descriptive and secondary analytical study that uses panel data to identify the factors of medication adherence to improve life care of hypertensive patients. Methods: The subjects of this study were 2,484 patients who were taking medication after hypertension using Korea Medical Panel 2015 data (β-version 1.0). Data analysis was performed using Chi-Square, Scheffe's test, and logistic regression using SPSS/win 22.0. Results: The level of medication adherence in patients with hypertension was 94.2%. The factors of medication adherence were gender and age in Model I of demographic factors, and the presence of disability, smoking, and drinking in Model II. Model III, which added drug use factors, was identified as drinking, drug duration, side effects, drug satisfaction, and payment of drug costs. Conclusion: In order to improve life care for hypertension patients, education and interventions on the importance of take medication and side effects of medications and how to take them will be needed in the early stages of diagnosis.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2013.01a
• /
• pp.467-474
• /
• 2013

Construction contactors must continuously seek to improve their cash flows, which reside at the heart of their financial success. They require careful planning, analysis, and optimization to avoid the risk of bankruptcy, remain profitable, and secure long-term growth. Sources of cash include bank loans and retained earnings, which are conceptually similar in that they both incur a cost of capital. Financial management therefore requires accurate yet customizable modeling capabilities that can quantify all expenses, including said cost of capital. However, currently existing cash flow models in construction engineering and management have strongly simplified the manner in which interest is assessed, which may even lead to overstating it at a disadvantage to contractors. The variable nature of cash balances, especially in the early phases of construction projects, contribute to this challenging issue. This research therefore extends a new cash flow model with an accurate interest calculation. It utilizes singularity functions, so called because of their ability to flexibly model changes across any number of different ranges. The interest function is continuous for activity costs of any duration and allows the realistic case that activities may begin between integer time periods, which are often calendar months. Such fractional interest calculation has hitherto been lacking from the literature. It also provides insights into the self-referential behavior of compound interest for variable cash balances. The contribution of this study is twofold; augmenting the corpus of financial analysis theory with a new interest formula, whose strengths include its generic nature and that it can be evaluated at any fractional value of time, and providing construction managers with a tool to help improve and fine-tune the financial performance of their projects.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
• /
• v.51 no.4
• /
• pp.449-456
• /
• 2023

Sugar or dextrose increases the cost of production of xanthan gum by Xanthomonas campestris. Brewers' Spent Grain (BSG) was chosen as a source of fermentable sugars. BSG is a significant industrial by-product generated in large quantities from the breweries. Primarily used as animal feed due to its high fiber and protein content, BSG holds great potential as an economically and ecologically sustainable substrate for fermenting biomolecules. This study explores BSG's potential as a cost-effective carbon source for producing xanthan, utilizing Xanthomonas campestris NCIM 2961. An aqueous extract was prepared from BSG and inoculated with the bacterium under standard fermentation conditions. After fermentation, xanthan gum was purified using a standard protocol. The xanthan yield from BSG media was compared to that from MGYP media (control). The fermentation parameters, including pH, temperature, agitation and duration were optimized for maximum xanthan gum yield by varying them at different levels. Following fermentation, the xanthan gum was purified from the broth by alcoholic precipitation and then dried. The weight of the dried gum was measured. The obtained xanthan from BSG under standard conditions and commercial food-grade xanthan were characterized using FTIR. The highest xanthan yields were achieved at 32 ℃, pH 6.0, and 72 h of fermentation at 200 rpm using BSG media. The FTIR spectra of xanthan from BSG media closely resembled that of commercial food-grade xanthan. The results confirm the potential of BSG as a cost-effective alternative carbon source for xanthan production, thereby reducing production costs and solid waste.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.233-240
• /
• 2012

The implementation of business process management (BPM) systems in large number of business organizations transforms BPM system into such a level of maturity and tends to collect large repositories of business process (BP) models. This issue encourages BP flexibility that leads to a large number of process variants derived from the same model, but differing in structure, to be stored in the large repositories of BP models. Therefore, the repositories may include thousands of activities and related business objects with variation of requirements and quality of service. It is a common practice to customize processes from reference processes or templates in order to reduce the time and effort required to design and deploy processes on all levels. In order to address redundancy and underutilization problems, a generic process model, called as reference BP, is absolutely necessary to cover the best of process variants. This study aims to develop multiple-objective business process genetic algorithm (MOBPGA) to find a set of non-dominated (Pareto) solutions of business reference model to enhance conventional approach which considered only a single objective on creating BP reference model by using proximity score measurement. A mixed-integer linear program is constructed to evaluate performance of the proposed MOBPGA on small-scale problems by using standard measures for multiple-objective techniques. The results will show the viability of applying MOBPGA in terms of simultaneously maximizing proximity score measurement, minimizing total duration, and total costs of the selected reference model.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.197-209
• /
• 2019

Purpose: This study was done to examine good death awareness, attitudes toward advance directives (ADs), and preference for care near the end-of-life (PCEOL) of hospitalized elders in long-term care hospitals. Relevant characteristics were investigated as well as correlation of the variables. Methods: This descriptive research study involved 161 hospitalized elderly patients in long-term care hospitals. A self-report questionnaire was used to measure Good Death Scale, ADs Survey, PCEOL Scale, and general characteristics. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation with SPSS/WIN 23.0. Results: In terms of good death awareness, a significant difference was observed; in according to age (F=3.35, p=.037), payer of treatment costs (F=3.98, p=.021), mobility (F=3.97, p=.021), heard discussion about ADs (t=-3.89, p<.001), and willing to complete ADs (t=2.12, p=.036). As far as attitudes toward ADs, the participants presented significant difference depending on religion (t=2.38, p=.018), average monthly income (F=3.91, p=.022), duration of hospital admission (F=5.33, p=.006), person to discuss ADs (t=-2.76, p=.006). On PCEOL, there was a significant difference, depending on religion (t=-3.59, p<.001) and perceived health status (F=3.93, p=.022). Finally, as for how the variables were related to each other, good death awareness and attitudes toward ADs had a weak positive correlation with PCEOL. Conclusion: To help seniors staying in nursing homes face a good death and enjoy autonomy, there should be educational and support systems that reflect each individual's sociodemographic characteristics so that the seniors can choose what kind of care they want to receive near the end-of-life.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.133-153
• /
• 2000

During the last several decades, Korea has been regarded as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. However, the small size of national land has not met the vigorous demand for land necessary to develop economic infra-structures such as large-scale harbors airports and highways. In order to satisfy the growing demand for land, the Korean government and industry have implemented the national land development programs to reclaim land from the sea fur the several decades. It is certain that these land development programs have resulted in a lot of property disputes between fishermen and public project administrators. This paper is to develop a quantitative model to estimate compensation for damages or restriction of charted fisheries resulting from large-scale public projects. In this paper, the compensation model is derived by using cost-volume-profit analysis framework because the compensation for charted fisheries basically depends on the factors such as the costs, production volume, profit of charted fisheries damaged or restricted by public projects. The model shows that the compensation for damages or restriction of charted fisheries is determined by the average annual profit, damage duration period, and the degree of fishery damages. In addition, the degree of fishery damages measured by the ratio of lost profit to annual average profit turns out to be determined by the following factors: annul profit, unit variable cost, decrease in production volume, the rate of increase in variable cost, and a change in fixed cost. Furthermore, this parer discusses the nam issues related to practices and regulation of the compensation for fishery damages in the current Fishery Act of Korea and suggests some appraisal methods which will be able to lead to theoretically correct and fair compensation for fisheries damages resulting from large-scale public projects.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
• /
• v.9 no.6
• /
• pp.121-129
• /
• 2009

The construction sites of small and medium buildings have small scale groundwork and the depth of excavation is often shallow. In this case, if the groundwork, girders, and ground slabs are built simultaneously by embedded assisting form rather than the existing conventional method to place concrete twice using the general form, we can expect to reduce the frame duration of the basement, resulting in cost savings. The existing embedded assisting form is restricted from use because there are cost problems with materials, labor costs,and with quality depending on the form's type. Therefore, this study is to provide an improved suggestion of building the groundwork, girders, and ground slabs simultaneously with Polystyrene by using the embedded assisting form. It also will compare the technique with existing methods of construction, and will verify its usefulness by evaluating each method of construction.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
• /
• v.19 no.5
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2020

The aim of this study is to analyze effects of factors on the number of vehicles involved in traffic accidents on freeway sections. In previous studies about traffic accident severity, the analysis of accidents involving multiple vehicles was insufficient. However, multiple-vehicle accidents are likely to cause casualties and are the main reasons increasing accident duration and social costs. In this study, the number of vehicles involved in an accident was interpreted as the result of the accident, not as the cause of the accident, and the impacts of each accident factor were analyzed using a multinomial logit model. The results indicate that multiple-vehicle accidents are mainly related to following factors: nighttime, driver's faults, obstacles on the road, a downhill slope, heavy vehicles, and freeway mainline sections including tunnels and bridges.