This report, jointly developed by the European Observatory, OECD, and WHO Europe, serves as a proof of concept for a Health Systems Performance Assessment (HSPA) dashboard. HSPA is pivotal for health system transformation, providing policymakers with key indicators to identify and address system performance issues. This brief represents a step towards more policy-friendly dashboards, emphasizing the need for a focused set of HSPA indicators aligned with policy goals. The brief highlights the alignment and complementarity of the WHO-Observatory global HSPA framework and OECD's renewed framework, which aid policymakers in navigating health systems with actionable, policy-relevant indicators. These frameworks establish connections between performance indicators, health system functions, and overarching goals, supporting a coherent policy dashboard. Tracer indicators, like workforce, digital health, and service delivery outcomes, are emphasized as crucial for assessing key policy areas. The report underscores the importance of investing in data collection and infrastructure at national and international levels to make HSPA effective. It advocates for continuous improvement and collaboration among major international organizations, including WHO, OECD, EU, and the Observatory, to align methodologies and support informed policy decision-making.

The World Health Report 2000 has generated considerable media attention, controversy in some countries, and debate in academic journals. This volume brings together in one place the substance of many of these key debates and reports, methodological advances, and new empiricism reflecting the evolution of the WHO approach since the year 2000. Specifically, the volume presents many differing regional and technical perspectives on key issues, major new methodological developments, and a quantum increase in the empirical basis for cross-country performance assessment. It also gives the full report of the Scientific Peer Review Group's exhaustive assessment of these new approaches.

International comparison of health system performance has become increasingly popular, made possible by the rapidly expanding availability of health data. It has become one of the most important levers for prompting health system reform. Yet, as the demand for transparency and accountability in healthcare increases, so too does the need to compare data from different health systems both accurately and meaningfully. This timely and authoritative book offers an important summary of the current developments in health system performance comparison. It summarises the current state of efforts to compare systems, and identifies and explores the practical and conceptual challenges that occur. It discusses data and methodological challenges, as well as broader issues such as the interface between evidence and practice. The book draws out the priorities for future work on performance comparison, in the development of data sources and measurement instruments, analytic methodology, and assessment of evidence on performance. It concludes by presenting the key lessons and future priorities, and in doing so offers a rich source of material for policy-makers, their analytic advisors, international agencies, academics and students of health systems.

The Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2017, the 48th edition of this series, includes the latest available economic, financial, social, and environmental indicators for the 48 regional members of the Asian Development Bank. It presents the latest key statistics on development issues concerning the economies of Asia and the Pacific to a wide audience, including policy makers, development practitioners, government officials, researchers, students, and the general public. Part I of this issue presents the current status of economies of Asia and the Pacific with respect to the Sustainable Development Goals based on selected indicators from the global indicator framework. This year's report also discusses results from an initiative to facilitate the compilation of statistics on asset ownership from a gender perspective. Part II comprises statistical indicators that capture economic, financial, social, and environmental developments. Part III presents key statistics and stylized facts on the phenomenon of global value chains.

Sensors for Health Monitoring discusses the characteristics of U-Healthcare systems in different domains, providing a foundation for working professionals and undergraduate and postgraduate students. The book provides information and advice on how to choose the best sensors for a U-Healthcare system, advises and guides readers on how to overcome challenges relating to data acquisition and signal processing, and presents comprehensive coverage of up-to-date requirements in hardware, communication and calculation for next-generation uHealth systems. It then compares new technological and technical trends and discusses how they address expected u-Health requirements. In addition, detailed information on system operations is presented and challenges in ubiquitous computing are highlighted. The book not only helps beginners with a holistic approach toward understanding u-Health systems, but also presents researchers with the technological trends and design challenges they may face when designing such systems. - Presents an outstanding update on the use of U-Health data analysis and management tools in different applications, highlighting sensor systems - Highlights Internet of Things enabled U-Healthcare - Covers different data transmission techniques, applications and challenges with extensive case studies for U-Healthcare systems

The two-volume set IFIP AICT 513 and 514 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2017, held in Hamburg, Germany, in September 2017. The 121 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 163 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: smart manufacturing system characterization; product and asset life cycle management in smart factories of industry 4.0; cyber-physical (IIoT) technology deployments in smart manufacturing systems; multi-disciplinary collaboration in the development of smart product-service solutions; sustainable human integration in cyber-physical systems: the operator 4.0; intelligent diagnostics and maintenance solutions; operations planning, scheduling and control; supply chain design; production management in food supply chains; factory planning; industrial and other services; operations management in engineer-to-order manufacturing; gamification of complex systems design development; lean and green manufacturing; and eco-efficiency in manufacturing operations.

Distance education, combining the use of correspondence texts, broadcasting and limited opportunities for face-to-face study, has been used in at least a hundred teacher training programmes over the last 25 years. Distance Education for Teacher Training is the first comparative review of the use of distance education and open learning for the training and upgrading of teachers. The book contains case studies using a broadly common format both to describe and analyse distance teacher training programmes in eleven countries across five continents. The case studies describe the methods used to examine how far the craft of teaching can be studied at a distance. Using a standardised microeconomic framework, they provide unique data on the comparative costs of training teachers by distance and conventional methods. The authors then draw general conclusions about the advantages and drawbacks of using distance education or open learning, about the conditions for success, and about comparative effects and costs. Distance Education for Teacher Training will be of value to all concerned with teacher education, whether in developing or industrialised countries, and to those working in and planning for distance education and open learning.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

In a world where there is increasing demand for the performance of health providers to be measured, there is a need for a more strategic vision of the role that performance measurement can play in securing health system improvement. This volume meets this need by presenting the opportunities and challenges associated with performance measurement in a framework that is clear and easy to understand. It examines the various levels at which health system performance is undertaken, the technical instruments and tools available, and the implications using these may have for those charged with the governance of the health system. Technical material is presented in an accessible way and is illustrated with examples from all over the world. Performance Measurement for Health System Improvement is an authoritative and practical guide for policy makers, regulators, patient groups and researchers.