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This paper presents and synthesizes results from three studies (two controlled experiments and one interview) on using recommender systems to reduce healthcare costs at prescription time, while taking time pressure into account. All of our subjects were real practicing physicians, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants. Across these studies, a total of 160 medical practitioners used a system that provides recommendations for medications along with associated cost information. The main finding was a general tendency among practitioners to reduce healthcare costs by prescribing lower cost medications when cost information is provided by a recommender system. The time pressure faced daily by prescribers, however, appears to impact the use of recommendations by nurse practitioners and physician assistants more than it does physicians. These results have significant implications for cost reduction in healthcare and for the design of effective real-time healthcare recommender systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software agents can perform effectively as negotiators in automated negotiation settings. We present a model for software agents that can automate negotiations by implementing a multi-issue learning heuristic that allows […]

A model for assigning capacity in private backbone networks for time varying traffic with the condition that circuit requirements consist of whole groups is presented. A three-phase heuristic solution procedure for the grouping constraints is developed, and bin packing procedures are used to accommodate granularity of groups. Lastly, the heuristic is used on some problems, and the results are compared with linear programming lower bounds.

A model for assigning transmission line capacities and routing circuits for a private backbone network under time varying traffic conditions is presented. Transformations of the model are generated, and a three-phase heuristic solution procedure which is based on Benders decomposition is developed. Results show that the heuristic is efficient, and the solutions are accurate by comparison with linear programming lower bounds.

This research compares the impacts of change requests due to requirement defects on the outcomes of software development projects developed using the Waterfall methodology. The three types of requirement defects examined are incorrect requirements, incomplete requirements and new requirements. Outcomes are measured in terms of total effort expended and software defects injected during software development. While prior literature has examined ways to minimize requirement defects, limited insights are available on the impacts of requirement defects that remain after baseline requirements have been gathered. A sample of 49 software projects following the Waterfall methodology from a large highly mature (CMMI level 5) software development organization was used to statistically estimate the hypothesized relationships between the variables. Using the coordination perspective to develop our model, we find that resolution of change requests due to new requirements increases defects injected as well as effort. The resolution of change requests due to incorrect requirements increases the number of new requirements as well as the number of defects injected. Resolution of change requests due to incomplete requirements do not have measurable impacts on software project outcomes. Efforts to minimize the number of change requests necessary due to new requirements, can therefore be an important factor in improving software project outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]