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Background and Aim: The traditional method of taking Chinese Medicine involves creating a decoction by cooking medicinal Chinese herbs. However, this method has become less popular, being replaced by the more convenient method of consuming concentrated Chinese herbal extracts, which creates challenges related to the complexity of stacking multiple formulas. Methods: We developed the Chinese Intelligence Prescription System (CIPS) to simplify the prescription process. In this study, we used data from our institutions pharmacy to calculate the number of reductions, average dispensing time, and resulting cost savings. Results: The mean number of prescriptions was reduced from 8.19 ± 3.65 to 7.37 ± 3.34 ( p = 2.46 × 10 - 8 ). The reduction in the number of prescriptions directly resulted in decreased dispensing time, reducing it from 1.79 ± 0.25 to 1.63 ± 0.66 min ( p = 1.88 × 10 - 14 ). The reduced dispensing time totaled 3.75 h per month per pharmacist, equivalent to an annual labor cost savings of $15,488 NTD per pharmacist. In addition, drug loss was reduced during the prescription process, with a mean savings of $4,517 NTD per year. The combined savings adds up to a not insignificant $20,005 NTD per year per pharmacist. When taking all TCM clinics/hospitals in Taiwan into account, the total annual savings would be $77 million NTD. Conclusion: CIPS assists clinicians and pharmacists to formulate precise prescriptions in a clinical setting to simplify the dispensing process while reducing medical resource waste and labor costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper completely examines the market factors, labor cost factors, and human capital factors which influence the location decisions of Taiwanese outward investment from 1998 to 2008. The empirical result which is based on the gravity model shows that the outward FDI of Taiwanese multinationals is generally affected by the market factors, but the impact of labor cost and human capital depends on different industries and market location factors which are relevant to different needs for relatively low-skilled workers and relatively highskilled workers. Our empirical results, which use sensitivity analysis to find out the variance between the industry and the market, are consistent with the predictions of our initial analysis. By the implications of the Kaitz index and information from other labor factors, we show that manufacturers will particularly emphasize technical requirements when they invest in developed countries. However, manufacturers will invest in developing countries with strong considerations of their lower labor cost. Because Mainland China has both inducements of market potential and lower-cost labor, the empirical result also shows that FDI in Mainland China is notably higher than in developed and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]