Benchmark indicators, performance

The term "audit is associated with a particular connotation in healthcare, namely clinical audit and refers to the review of case histories of patients against the benchmark of current best practice. The clinical audit was proposed as a tool to improve clinical practice and a recent study indicates that it can do so, though the effects are modest. A more general role for audit, however, is that it can be used as part of the wider management exercise of benchmarking of performance with the use of relevant performance indicators against the performance of peers. 

ERA2000, a software tool, has been developed to help chemical companies benchmark their performance across a range of process and management environmental indicators,... 

A number of important quality indicator programmes have been established around the world, with hospitals signing up on a voluntary basis to share information, benchmark their performance against their peers and learn from... 

There are numerous safety metrics available to safety and health professionals that can be used as performance indicators. These metrics include those established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Energy, and private industry. These resources provide the safety professional with methodologies to measure safety performance and serve as benchmark indicators. 

This index value indicates that for every hour worked, the organization lost 3.33 due to occupational injuries, deaths, and lost workdays. This index value can be compared to other organizations, and from year to year. With some idea as to what an acceptable index value is, it can be used to benchmark safety performance. 

Boyd, G., Dutrow, E., and Tunnessen, W., 2008. The evolution of the ENERGY STAR energy performance indicator for benchmarking industrial plant manufacturing energy use, Journal of Cleaner Production, 16, 709-715. 

Using these performance indicators for benchmarking is usually very complex due to the diversity of production processes and business models. For example, processing special chemistry in batch processes usually leads to higher fixed costs... 

Lennernas s group at Uppsala has performed extensive studies to confirm the validity of this in vivo experimental set-up at assessing the rate and the extent of drug absorption. Recovery of PEG 4000 (a non-absorbable marker) is more than 95%, which indicates that the absorption barrier is intact. In addition, maintenance of functional viability of the mucosa during perfusion has been demonstrated by the rapid transmucosal transport of D-glucose and L-leucine. Estimation of absorption half-lives from the measured Pefr agree well with half-lives derived from oral dose studies in humans (i.e. physiologically realistic half-lives). Human Peff estimates are well correlated with the fraction absorbed in humans, and served as the basis for BCS development, and hence the technique is ultimately the benchmark by which other in situ intestinal perfusion techniques are compared. The model has been extensively used to... 

In addition to the need for scientific improvements to allow probabilistic risk assessments to be properly performed and interpreted, there also exists a need to educate stakeholders about what the US system for tolerance establishment and monitoring does and does not do. In simplest terms, the US system can be described as a food quality system but not necessarily a food safety system. This results from the fact that the pesticide tolerances are not safety standards but rather exist as enforcement tools that allow an assessment of how well pesticide application regulations are adhered to. Violative residues demonstrate the likelihood of pesticide misuse but should not be considered, in the vast majority of cases, to represent unsafe residues. Safety considerations govern whether or not the use of pesticides on specified commodities will be permitted tolerances, when granted, serve as indicators of good agricultural practices rather than as toxicological benchmarks. 

Once an assessment has determined that the data indicate human risk potential for reproductive and developmental toxicity, the next step is to perform a quantitative evaluation. Dose-response data from human and experimental animal reproductive and developmental toxicity studies are reviewed to identify a no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) or a lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (LOAEL), and/or to derive a benchmark dose (BMD). Duration adjustments of the NOAEL, LOAEL, or BMD are often made, particularly for inhalation exposures when extrapolating to different exposure scenarios. Such adjustments have not been routinely applied to developmental toxicity data. The subcommittee recommends that duration adjustments be considered for both reproductive and developmental toxicity... 

Clinical (PK, PD, Safety and Efficacy) Human clinical studies can range in complexity from standard-design PK studies to complicated, long-term efficacy trials evaluating one or more indications in multiple populations. Human PK studies are used as the benchmark for establishing bioequivalence of conventional dosage forms. For traditional pharmaceuticals for which reliance on systemic exposure may not be suitable, PD or clinical safety and efficacy may be performed to show equivalence. 

Targets would be based on use-specific volumes as a proxy for human and environmental exposures, occupational health statistics, industry performance indicators, emission registers or other benchmarking schemes. 

The Six Sigma process can be used to benchmark the capability of a validation process and hence indicate the significance of any opportunity for improvement. Average capability is characterized by a Three Sigma performance. Six Sigma indicates a world class performance anything beyond Six Sigma is not considered cost-effective. ... 

Many organizations track the number of process safety incidents, and some even share that information with others. However, while a higher incident rate may indicate weakness in the overall process safety system, the incident rate alone will not identify which process safety system elements need improvement. Detailed benchmarking with industry peers can aid in developing a targeted performance improvement effort. 

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) publishes the Principles for Global Corporate Responsibility Benchmarks for Measuring Business Performance - a compendium of leading CSR indicators and standards. 

LQG-Benchmark The achievable performance of a linear system characterized by quadratic costs and Gaussian noise can be estimated by solving the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) problem. The solution can be plotted as a trade-off curve that displays the minimal achievable variance of the controlled variable versus the variance of the manipulated variable [115] which is used as a CPM benchmark. Operation close to optimal performance is indicated by an operating point near this trade-off curve. For multivariable control systems, H2 norms are plotted. The LQG objective function and the corresponding H2 norms are [115]... 

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