A reduction in electricity and heating expenses is a major consideration with every hospital in Japan. In our hospital, all the personnel including the members of the facilities division have joined forces to mount the “1,300kW campaign” aimed at cutting down on the amount of maximum instantaneous electric power consumption (demand) from 1,500kW to 1,300kW in one year, and succeeded in curtailing heating and lighting expenses by well over 4 million yen. The key to success was how to control the amount of demand. The cooperation of all the personnel of the hospital was vital. Therefore, it was important to raise the awareness of all the personnel concerning energy conservation. We thought that setting the concrete numerical target “from 1,500kW to 1,300kW” was effective. It is no exaggeration that such a cutback in energy consumption contributes not only to the management of a medical institution but also to the environmental preservation on a global scale. Finally, the medical institutions should put contribution to the community into the basic principles at the time when environmental preservation (ecology), energy consumption reduction, risk management and catastrophic disaster etc. have become topics of conversation.
Hospitals ; Consumption of goods ; Human Resources ; success ; Economic demand

GENDISCAN study (Gene Discovery for Complex traits in Asian population of Northeast area) was designed to incorporate methodologies which enhance the power to identify genetic variations underlying complex disorders. Use of population isolates as the target population is a unique feather of this study. However, population isolates may have hidden inbreeding structures which can affect the validity of the study. To understand how this issue may affect results of GENDISCAN, we estimated inbreeding coefficients in two study populations in Mongolia. We analyzed the status of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE), polymorphism information contents (PIC), heterozygosity, allelic diversity, and inbreeding coefficients, using 317 and 1,044 STR (short tandem repeat) markers in Orkhontuul and Dashbalbar populations. HWE assumptions were generally met in most markers (88.6% and 94.2% respectively), and single marker PIC ranged between 0.2 and 0.9. Inbreeding coefficients were estimated to be 0.0023 and 0.0021, which are small enough to assure that conventional genetic analysis would work without any specific modification. We concluded that the population isolates used in GENDISCAN study would not present significant inflation of type I errors from inbreeding effects in its gene discovery analysis.
Animals ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Feathers ; Genetic Association Studies ; Genetic Variation ; Health Services Needs and Demand ; Humans ; Inbreeding ; Inflation, Economic ; Mongolia

GENDISCAN study (Gene Discovery for Complex traits in Asian population of Northeast area) was designed to incorporate methodologies which enhance the power to identify genetic variations underlying complex disorders. Use of population isolates as the target population is a unique feather of this study. However, population isolates may have hidden inbreeding structures which can affect the validity of the study. To understand how this issue may affect results of GENDISCAN, we estimated inbreeding coefficients in two study populations in Mongolia. We analyzed the status of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE), polymorphism information contents (PIC), heterozygosity, allelic diversity, and inbreeding coefficients, using 317 and 1,044 STR (short tandem repeat) markers in Orkhontuul and Dashbalbar populations. HWE assumptions were generally met in most markers (88.6% and 94.2% respectively), and single marker PIC ranged between 0.2 and 0.9. Inbreeding coefficients were estimated to be 0.0023 and 0.0021, which are small enough to assure that conventional genetic analysis would work without any specific modification. We concluded that the population isolates used in GENDISCAN study would not present significant inflation of type I errors from inbreeding effects in its gene discovery analysis.
Animals ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Feathers ; Genetic Association Studies ; Genetic Variation ; Health Services Needs and Demand ; Humans ; Inbreeding ; Inflation, Economic ; Mongolia

Commerce ; Delivery of Health Care ; economics ; Economics ; Health Services Accessibility ; economics ; Health Services Needs and Demand ; Health Status ; Humans ; Models, Economic ; National Health Programs ; organization & administration ; Outcome Assessment (Health Care) ; Singapore