Mehmet Tolga Taner

An overview of six sigma applications in healthcare industry

Purpose – Delays, measurement and medical errors and variability often undermine the delivery of safe, effective patient care. However, it is possible to minimize them by applying six‐sigma. This methodology aims to focus on the root causes of healthcare problems, analyses them by flowcharts and fishbone diagrams and produces near‐perfect healthcare services.Design/methodology/approach – Five case studies in healthcare are designed to show the performance improvement accomplished by six sigma. The DMAIC (Define‐Measure‐ Analyse‐Improve‐Control), i.e. a road‐map for problem solving and service/process improvement, is implemented.Findings – The findings in this paper show that the healthcare organization has a greater ability to address challenges across the system. Resource utilization has been maximized. Fewer redundancies, waste and rework have been observed. Bottle‐necks related to scheduling have diminished. Working conditions have improved for healthcare personnel. Increased patient and physician sati...

An Alternative Human Development Index Considering Unemployment

An Alternative Human Development Index Considering Unemployment The Human Development Index (HDI) has played an influential role in the debate on human development (HD) for many years. However, no index is perfect and neither is the HDI of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). This paper aims to construct a new composite index for the development performance of a sample of 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries by adding a fourth indicator, namely the unemployment index, to the calculation of HDI. The addition of the unemployment factor to the HDI as a new indicator has the potential to make the index more comprehensive and present a suitable approach for assessing the development performance of countries.

An assessment of diagnostic efficiency by Taguchi/DEA methods

PURPOSE The aim of this paper is to propose a new, objective and consistent method for the calculation of the diagnostic efficiency in medical applications. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH In this study, a hybrid method of Taguchi and DEA is proposed. This method reflects the diversity of inputs and outputs by incorporating the stepwise application of sensitivity, specificity, leveling threshold, and efficiency score. A hypothetical case study is given which involves eight readers of X-ray films in clinical radiology. FINDINGS The selected pairs of sensitivity and specificity yielded two efficient readers. After super efficiency analysis, Reader 6 is found to be the most efficient reader. ORIGINALITY/VALUE The paper presents a new, objective and consistent method for the calculation of the diagnostic efficiency in medical applications.

Modelling of Taguchi's signal-to-noise ratios for healthcare

Development of robust diagnostic tests depends on improving classification accuracy of patients. Finding the thresholds for classifying the normal and the diseased is considered as an optimisation problem. For this purpose, Taguchis signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios are applied in order to improve simultaneously the misclassification rates. Computational results of 140 diagnostic tests as well as that of a case study in female breast cancer confirmed the effectiveness of this method. Having reduced the variability in classifying the patients via Taguchi methods, more accurate and cost-efficient diagnostic tests can be designed on target in healthcare.

Taguchi's experimental design method on improvement of medical image quality

PURPOSE The aim of this article is to show how Taguchi methods can be applied to health care to improve the quality of medical images. Quality is often integrated with the performance and parameters of the design of medical applications. Many imaging methods can be designed by setting the correct combination of parameters and estimating the contribution of individual quality influencing factors by means of incorporating parameter design and orthogonal arrays. The performance of any imaging equipment can be measured by signal-to-noise ratio. This inherent index can give a sense of how close the performance is to the ideal. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Data were collected from a database of 82 diagnostic thoracic computed tomography (CT) scans. Signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) were calculated. FINDINGS Given the S/Ns, the best CT level was found to be level 4. ORIGINALITY/VALUE To reduce bias resulting from the observers readings, robust equipments should be designed incorporating Taguchis experimental design. Further work is needed to establish imaging protocols and new hardware design.

Evaluation of interpupillary distance in the Turkish population.

Purpose The aim of this study was to report normative values and ranges of interpupillary distance (IPD) in different age groups of a Turkish population. Methods A total of 756 healthy subjects were included in this prospective study. After a complete ophthalmic evaluation, subjects were divided into four age groups to assess differences between age groups in relation to IPD. The age groups were 20–30, 31–50, 51–70, and 71–89 years. Far IPD measurements were performed using an autorefractometer (Topcon RM-8800). Results The mean age was 48.42±20.55 years, ranging from 19 to 89 years. The mean IPD was calculated as 62.5±4.1 mm (range 49–76). The mean IPD value was observed to be significantly higher among males compared to females (P<0.001). The difference among groups in terms of mean IPD was statistically significant (P<0.001). IPD increased by 4.19 mm in males and 3.11 mm in females from the young adults (20–30 years) to older adults (51–70 years), and then a decrease (2.6 and 0.19 mm for males and females, respectively) occurred between 70 and 89 years of age. Conclusion The current study offers the population-specific normative data on far IPD in different age groups. Our study showed that sex and age had a significant effect on IPD. Knowledge of normal values in this population subgroup may be useful in studying orbito-cranial growth patterns, syndrome diagnosis, surgical management of cranio-facial deformities and trauma, and manufactures of optical frames and lenses.