Date: 8/16/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
-Abstract:
The talk will explain medical device in general from perspective of electrical design, demonstrate the unique aspects of electrical medical device. The students will understand the relation between the electrical design and signal processing which will benefit them in their long-term career, turning them from an EE engineer into a system engineer.
-Speaker:
Pei-Jie Cao, received Ph.D in BME from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China, 3 years of postdoc at the Penn State University, 2 years research faculty at USC, 15 years of experience in electrical medical device industry. Strong background at mixed signal design, signal processing.
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Speaker: Dr. John Ku
Date: 8/9/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
-Brief introduction
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), established in September 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq is an intergovernmental cartel. The founder member includes Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela. Today the membership also includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Indonesia, Angola and Ecuador. OPEC conducts formal meetings to discuss oil prices and output for the purpose of increasing their oil revenue and in 1982 started to assign explicit crude oil production quotas to each individual member country.
A key reason for high oil prices in the artificial scarcity imposed on the market by the OPEC cartel, which controls 70 percent of world’s known oil reserves but produces only 40 percent of world oil production and restricts how much oil reaches consumers. Increases in world oil consumption have been driven principally by developing countries in Asia. Asian crude oil consumption has more than double since 1985 but OPEC today barely produces more crude oil it did in 1977. The high oil prices will remain high for the foreseeable future; this is due to the increasing weakness of the US dollar, rapid increases in demand from the rapidly growing economics of India and China. Major oil exporting countries are using more oil domestically. Particularly significant are Indonesia, which no longer exports oil, Mexico and Iran, where projected demand will exceed production about 5 years. High oil prices have a large negative impact on the global growth; OPEC’s role in the price escalation should be exposed and not be obscured by misconceptions about oil resource depletion.
-Speakers
John Y. K. Ku graduated from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan with B.S. E. degree in Mining Engineering and received his M.S. & Ph.D., in Mineral Economics from Colorado School of Mines. His interests include economic evaluation and investment decision methods, advertising management, marketing and financial planning. He has extensive research in Economics Impact of Alternative Energy Policies and Strategies. He was the Chief Engineering Geologist for “ North Lantau Expressway, Site Investigation-Phase 1” Hong Kong. He was a professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Chu Hai College, Hong Kong and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver.
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Speaker: Dr. Wu-Der Tsay & Dr. Mei-Chiao Lai
Date: 8/2/2008, Saturday
Time: 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM
-Brief introduction
The pursuit of integrity and full development of body-mind-spirit, the international medical tourism industry has been promoted in recent
years and become one of the world’s fast-growing and important industries. The current production value of Medical Tourism has reached US $20 billion and will increase to US $40 billion by 2010. 150,000 Americans seek medical treatment abroad in 2006. The number is expected to increase to 300,000 in 2007. Many Americans seek medical treatment in India, Thailand, Mexico, Costa Rica and Singapore. If you are interested in finding out the trend in medical tourism, this is definitely a seminar you don't want to miss.
-Speakers
Dr. Wu-Der Tsay, Ph.D from UK, professor in Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences.
Dr. Mei Chiao Lai, professor in Diwan University.
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Speaker: Ms. Liana Mortazavi
Date: 8/5/2008, Tuesday
Time: 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Brief introduction
It is estimated that 4 billion people in the world today live on less than $2 a day. This group, and those slightly more fortunate, have traditionally been unable to gain access to financial services due to a combination of issues--geographic isolation, illiteracy, lack of collateral, and social prejudice. The microfinance industry, however, wants to slowly change this pattern by providing banking services, such as small loans and savings products, to the very poor in order to help them grow small business and improve their standard of living. We will examine various microfinance institutional models being used today, including that of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which along with its founder, Muhammad Yunus, jointly won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Biography
Liana Mortazavi has a varied background in teaching, nonprofit development, writing, and community service. Her experience includes working as a foreign scholar at Daqing Petroleum Institute in China's Heilongjiang Province, producing marketing and communications materials for the Northern California Community Loan Fund based in San Francisco, writing on-line articles for Consumer Health Interactive, and volunteering at Stanford Hospital's Emergency Department.
Liana graduated cum laude with a BA in East Asian Studies and a minor Mandarin from UC Davis and holds an MBA from San Jose State University.
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Speaker: Dr. Janelle Y. Lee
Date: 7/12/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Brief introduction:
Are healthier patients more satisfied with their care than sicker patients? To understand how post-visit patient satisfaction is associated with different aspects of patient health, as measured by self-reported health status, a global diagnosis-based health measure, and the visit diagnoses.
Surveys were mailed to randomly selected patients following office visits during years 1998-2006 at Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. Patients were asked to rate the provider’s “skills and ability”, whether they received the “care and services your medical condition required”, and whether the provider “listened to you and explained what was being done and why”; and these 3 items were averaged to obtain a summary score, which ranged from poor (1) to excellent (5). Diagnoses at the visit were obtained from department-specific diagnosis check lists and grouped via the Clinical Classifications tool. A co-morbidity risk score was computed by Diagnostic Cost Group (DxCG) which is based on inpatient and outpatient diagnoses, age, sex, and Medicare status. The primary analysis was cross-sectional: satisfaction was examined in relation to health, the global measure of risk, and the visit diagnosis, adjustment for additional covariates. A secondary analysis was longitudinal: change in patient satisfaction was examined in relation to change in health, in the subset of patients surveyed more than once after visits to the same provider separated by more than 1 year.
4.7 million surveys were received. The response rate was 43%. The average satisfaction score was 4.23 on the 5 point scale. After adjustment for age, gender, race/ethnicity, date of visit, facility, type of provider, higher levels of satisfaction were associated with more favorable self-reported health status (p<.0001), and with less favorable DxCG co-morbidity score (p <.0001). Examples of diagnoses with higher satisfaction levels were cancers, HIV infection, health/emotional counseling or post-operative exam (score range from 4.5- 4.7). Diagnoses with lower satisfaction scores included motor vehicle accidents, tinnitus, otitis media or pain/strain (with mean levels of post-visit satisfaction ranging from 3.8 – 4.0). Among the 254,000 patients who were surveyed more than once, we found that increased satisfaction was strongly associated with an improvement in self-reported health status (P<0.0001), but was also weakly associated with decline in the diagnosis-based measure of health (P<0.0418).
Like previous studies, our study also found that higher self-reported health status was associated with greater satisfaction. Interestingly, however, patients who were healthier according to the diagnosis-based health measure tended to report lower satisfaction. Thus, the most dissatisfied patients tended to be healthier patients who perceived themselves to be sick. Similarly, the most satisfied patients were sicker patients who perceived themselves to be healthy. This might be explained by a tendency for providers to treat sicker patients with more attentiveness than patients with conditions that are bothersome but not serious, especially if—like tinnitus—they are not treatable. Past research on the relationship between health and patient satisfaction has only examined self-reported health status. This may misrepresent how patient satisfaction and health are related. Overall, patient’s perceived health status, their providers’ assessment of their health, and the reason for specific visits, combine to influence post-visit satisfaction in ways that are important to understand in order to learn how to improve care.
Biography:
Dr. Lee has been a data consultant in the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California since 1999. She has currently involved in a five-year project in Cardiovascular Disease Research Network (CVRN), which facilitate and perform collaborative cardiovascular disease (CVD) research among healthcare organizations located in geographically diverse areas. Her current research interests focus on quality improvement and current research projects include early detection and recognition of incident hypertension, pay for performance in relation to variations in quality of care, patient satisfaction, and eCare (Web Care) for Diabetes and hypertension in a randomized clinic trail.
Janelle Y. Lee, MHA, Dr.PH, obtained her BA on business administration at Fu-Jen Catholic University and master degree in Hospital and Healthcare Administration from China Medical College in Taiwan. Her master thesis was focused on strategic choices in response to payment systems. After graduation, she worked as a hospital administrator in the Research and Design (R&D) Department in Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH). CGMH is the largest medical center in Asian and well-known in the health care management in Taiwan. Her major duties at CGMH included establishing standard procedures for payment system, planning and setting up Hospital Information System (e.g. computerized medical records and X-ray), and improving the hospital operating procedures. This position allowed her to have empirical experience in healthcare administration, health information, and quality of care. After working in the healthcare industry, she decided to pursue her doctoral degree in the United States. In 1998, she received her Doctor of Public Health (Dr. PH) degree in health system management from Tulane University, New Orleans. Her doctoral dissertation was in the area of productivity and efficiency in managed care settings.
Dr. Lee has published more than 10 peer-reviewed articles in the prestigious health and medical journals such as Journal of American Medical Association, Pediatric Infection Disease Journal, and American Journal of Managed Care. The topic includes the use of antidepressants and medication adherence in relation to treatment outcomes and adverse effect, efficacy of different vaccines, as well as comparison of risk adjustment models.
In coming fall semester 2008, Dr. Lee will bring her experience in health care management and research training to the MBA program at NPU. She will offer health care management related courses which would help students with business management skills needed to manage effectively in health care delivery systems.
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