Federal University of Pernambuco

About: Federal University of Pernambuco is a education organization based out in Recife, Brazil. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 22973 authors who have published 35124 publications receiving 426579 citations.

Improving decision-making and management of hospital resources: An application of the PROMETHEE II method in an Emergency Department

Abstract: An Emergency Department (ED) is considered the heart of a hospital and in many cities around the world, and especially in developing countries such as Brazil, it is very often the sole source of medical care. Making decisions about hospital resource management is not a trivial activity and incorrect decision-making can have serious consequences on the quality of health care services provided to the community. This paper describes the application of the PROMETHEE II method to support decision-making and resource management in an ED. Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is especially useful in systems in which decision-making is complex and involves different considerations. PROMETHEE II was chosen for this study because its outranking approach is considered appropriate for the decision context of hospital services. This method was tested and validated with experimental data from a Brazilian public hospital. The ranking showed the best alternatives to be implemented to improve the throughput of patients in the “Blue Room”. Six months after implementing the best alternatives, the waiting time during periods of overcrowding had been reduced by around 70%. The PROMETHEE II method proved to be a rational tool to support the Decision Maker (DM) to choose the best alternative to solve bottlenecks related to overcrowding in an ED. Improving decision-making in hospital departments means taking actions to increase the throughput of patients and reducing the number of patients-in-process.

Improved 8-point Approximate DCT for Image and Video Compression Requiring Only 14 Additions

Abstract: Video processing systems such as HEVC requiring low energy consumption needed for the multimedia market has lead to extensive development in fast algorithms for the efficient approximation of 2-D DCT transforms. The DCT is employed in a multitude of compression standards due to its remarkable energy compaction properties. Multiplier-free approximate DCT transforms have been proposed that offer superior compression performance at very low circuit complexity. Such approximations can be realized in digital VLSI hardware using additions and subtractions only, leading to significant reductions in chip area and power consumption compared to conventional DCTs and integer transforms. In this paper, we introduce a novel 8-point DCT approximation that requires only 14 addition operations and no multiplications. The proposed transform possesses low computational complexity and is compared to state-of-the-art DCT approximations in terms of both algorithm complexity and peak signal-to-noise ratio. The proposed DCT approximation is a candidate for reconfigurable video standards such as HEVC. The proposed transform and several other DCT approximations are mapped to systolic-array digital architectures and physically realized as digital prototype circuits using FPGA technology and mapped to 45 nm CMOS technology.