We have recently shown that heart failure admission rates continue to increase in the UK ᎏ particularly in older age groups. As hospital activity represents the major cost component of healthcare expenditure related to heart failure, this study Ž . evaluated the current cost of this syndrome to the National Health Service NHS in the UK. We applied contemporary estimates of healthcare activity associated with heart failure to the whole UK population on an age and sex-specific basis to calculate its cost to the NHS for the year 1995. Direct components of healthcare included in these estimates were hospital admissions associated with a principal diagnosis of heart failure, associated outpatient consultations, general practice consultations and prescribed drug therapy. We also calculated the cost of nursing-home care following a primary heart failure admission and the cost of hospitalisations associated with a secondary diagnosis of heart failure. Adjusting for probable increases in hospital activity and the progressive ageing of the UK population, we have also projected the cost of heart failure to the NHS for the year 2000. We estimated that there were 988 000 individuals requiring treatment for heart failure in the UK during 1995. The 'direct' cost of healthcare for these patients was estimated to be £716 million, or 1.83% of total NHS expenditure. Hospitalisations and drug prescriptions accounted for 69 and 18% of this expenditure, respectively. The additional costs associated with long-term nursing home care and secondary heart failure admissions accounted for a further Ž . £751 million 2.0% of total NHS expenditure . By the year 2000, we estimated that the combined total direct cost of heart failure would have risen to £905 million ᎏ equivalent to 1.91% of total NHS expenditure. Using well-validated sets of data, these findings re-confirm the importance of heart failure as a major public health problem in the UK. The annual direct cost of heart failure to the NHS in 2000 is likely to be of the order of 1.9% of total expenditure ᎏ the predominant cost component being hospitalisation. ᮊ
Dynamic difficulty adjustments can be used in humancomputer systems in order to improve user engagement and performance. In this paper, we use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to obtain passive brain sensing data and detect extended periods of boredom or overload. From these physiological signals, we can adapt a simulation in order to optimize workload in real-time, which allows the system to better fit the task to the user from moment to moment. To demonstrate this idea, we ran a laboratory study in which participants performed path planning for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a simulation. Based on their state, we varied the difficulty of the task by adding or removing UAVs and found that we were able to decrease errors by 35% over a baseline condition. Our results show that we can use fNIRS brain sensing to detect task difficulty in real-time and construct an interface that improves user performance through dynamic difficulty adjustment.
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