63 results about "Current practice" patented technology

Systems, methods, and graphical user interfaces are provided for identifying, analyzing, and adopting opportunities for optimizing clinical processes within clinical facilities. An optimized practice process model may be defined for a particular clinical procedure, setting forth an optimal clinical process. In addition, critical levers may be identified within the optimal clinical process, representing the activities that have the greatest impact on outcomes. Clinical facilities may collect current measures for the critical levers, and the current measures may be compared against an optimal, benchmark, and / or target measure. Based on the comparison, opportunities for clinical process optimization may be identified. Those opportunities may then be analyzed and prioritized for adoption into a facility's current practice. Clinical processes within healthcare facilities may be further improved by continuously monitoring facility data and identifying further opportunities of optimization. Further, collected data may be used to refine the optimized practice process model, allowing for further optimization.

A system and method for optimally managing the inventory of railroad freight cars and for transporting and processing the unladen cars to reloading points. The system provides a means for returning unladen cars at one or more strategically located yards or aggregation facilities where the cars are cleaned, inspected, repaired / maintained, stored and blocked for ultimate delivery. After such processes the cars may be treated as generic, and used for the transport of any materials within the constraints of the car type, rather than being dedicated to specific products and returned to a specific production facilities as in current practice. As well, the method provides a means by which multiple car operators may pool their collective rail car assets to further optimize the rail car supply chain. The method provides a means to determine candidate locations for such aggregation facilities / processing yards, and for optimal inventory control, sorting by next destination, and transit scheduling to deliver unladen cars to their next reloading points. The system and method are particularly useful in transporting specific polymer resins to a manufacturing region and returning the rail car through the aggregation / processing facility such that the cleaned, repaired, inspected, stored and blocked car may be used at any resin production facility.

A thermal oxidation tester is shown for determining thermal stability of a fluid, particularly hydrocarbons when subjected to elevated temperatures. The tendency of the heated fluid to oxidize and (1) form deposits on a surface of a heater tube and (2) form solids therein, are both measured at a given flow rate, temperature and time. The measured results are used to determine whether a fluid sample passes or fails the test. Sample flow rate is important in the jet fuel thermal oxidation test. Current practice requires manual drop counting or flow confirmation with the use of volumetric glassware. An apparatus is described to precisely measure the flow rate and automatically perform flow rate check using a drip rate method and / or volumetric method.