Comparison of Cost-Effectiveness between Inpatient and Home-Based Post-Acute Care Models for Stroke Rehabilitation in Taiwan

Stroke rehabilitation focuses on alleviating post-stroke disability. Post-acute care (PAC) offers an intensive rehabilitative program as transitional care following acute stroke. A novel home-based PAC program has been initiated in Taiwan since 2019. Our study aimed to compare the current inpatient PAC model with a novel home-based PAC model in cost-effectiveness and functional recovery for stroke patients in Taiwan. One hundred ninety-seven stroke patients eligible for the PAC program were divided into two different health interventional groups. One received rehabilitation during hospitalization, and the other received rehabilitation by therapists at home. To evaluate the health economics, we assessed the total medical expenditure on rehabilitation using the health system of Taiwan national health insurance and performed cost-effectiveness analyses using improvements of daily activity in stroke patients based on the Barthel index (BI). Total rehabilitative duration and functional recovery were also documented. The total rehabilitative cost was cheaper in the home-based PAC group (p < 0.001), and the cost-effectiveness is USD 152.474 ± USD 164.661 in the inpatient group, and USD 48.184 ± USD 35.018 in the home group (p < 0.001). Lesser rehabilitative hours per 1-point increase of BI score was noted in the home-PAC group with similar improvements in daily activities, life quality and nutrition in both groups. Home-based PAC is more cost-effective than inpatient PAC for stroke rehabilitation.

On the Learnability of Possibilistic Theories

We investigate learnability of possibilistic theories from entailments in light of Angluin’s exact learning model. We consider cases in which only membership, only equivalence, and both kinds of queries can be posed by the learner. We then show that, for a large class of problems, polynomial time learnability results for classical logic can be transferred to the respective possibilistic extension. In particular, it follows from our results that the possibilistic extension of propositional Horn theories is exactly learnable in polynomial time. As polynomial time learnability in the exact model is transferable to the classical probably approximately correct (PAC) model extended with membership queries, our work also establishes such results in this model.

Mood

The purpose of this chapter is to overview the sport mood model and mood research conducted in disability sport. Researchers in disability sport have examined mood in a limited fashion, with an overreliance on the Profile of Mood States (POMS) scale, which measures vigor, confusion, depressed mood, anger, fatigue, and tension. A clear limitation of the POMS scale is the underrepresentation of positive mood states that athletes experience. Many of the researchers in disability sport have asked modest questions, such as do athletes with acquired versus congenital disabilities have more positive mood states? Other researchers have used the positive and negative affective schedule and have been able to offer a more well-rounded commentary on various positive and negative affective states and how they are related to other cognitions and sport performance. The chapter concludes with the recommendation that researchers use models of emotion and mood such as the 12-point affect circumplex (12-PAC) model and address how core affect can be assessed to reflect mood or emotion.

MD: A New Mobile User Interface Model

In view of various shortcomings of the traditional MVC model and PAC model in mobile applications, this paper presents a new type of mobile user interface model named MD to guide the mobile user interface design and prototyping. MD model reasonably distributes the tasks between front-end and back-end: input and output are closely coupled as front code put in the D to achieve macro-communication, application model can be considered as back code put in the M. This model effectively solves the power restricted and other problems of mobile devices. By applying this model to the prototype development of Android-based Interactive Graphics Toolkit—AIGT, we verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the model.

Corruption, the Southern African Development Community Anti-corruption Protocol and the principal–agent–client model

Since the 1990s, a number of anti-corruption conventions have been adopted due to pressure from international financial institutions, donor countries and governments of major industrialised nations. One of these conventions is the Anti-corruption Protocol adopted by the Southern African Development Community. This article examines this Convention against the backdrop of the principal–agent–client (PAC) model which influences much of the current anti-corruption measures ranging from legal and civil service reform through to privatisation of the public sector. In focusing on the efforts to fight and prevent corruption through legal and public sector reform, this paper highlights the limitations of externally imposed solutions largely driven by donors. Using Tanzania, a country that has seen extensive technical input from donor agencies in reforming the law and bureaucratic structures, as an illustration, this article argues that the limited success of such donor-driven anti-corruption strategies is attributable to a number of reasons ranging from reform policies of donors and paternalistic attitudes to political shifts and antipathy towards external demands for reforms that are fuelled by the colonial past. This paper recommends that for a recipient country to take ownership of the anti-corruption strategies it is important to tailor the PAC model to the cultural, social and political context of the recipient country so that the solutions are seen as an indigenous initiative, thus enabling sustainable change in attitudes and behaviour.