Lifetime provider costs

As discussed previously, direct COI are the economic representation of resource consumption and have a natural monetary value. They can occur on the provider and the household side. This chapter analyses the direct COI in four steps Provider cost before HAART (Sect. 2.1.1), provider cost in the HA ART era (Sect. 2.1.2), lifetime provider costs (Sect. 2.1.3), and direct household cost (Sect. 2.1.4). 

Study Country Study year Lifetime provider costs per patient... 

Schackman et al. (2006) projected HIV medical care costs in the USA in 2004 US. From the time of entering HIV care, the discounted lifetime direct provider cost was calculated as US 385,200, whereas 73% were due to antiretrovirals. For patients with a CD4- - count of less than 200, the discounted lifetime cost was US 354,100. 

In a nut-shell Out knowledge of the direct COI of HIV/AIDS has strongly increased in the last 10 years. Depending on the level of care in a particular country, provider cost per case might be as high as US 25,000 p.a., and the discounted lifetime costs in the HAART era will be more than 100,000 US per case. There can be no doubt that AIDS will cause higher costs for the patients and his household, but we know almost nothing about these costs. 

Tool quality can also affect the surface quality and over time, the tool itself can become porous. Replacing tools generally must be done as the wear will impact part quality to the point of rejection to most OEM standards. Tool hfe varies but 1000 parts is a common figure used to estimate lifetime tool costs. Tool cost is relatively inexpensive, since it is soft tooling. However, multiple tools are generally needed to meet OEM demands. As an example, a truck hood that is from the HSU process may need 6-10 molds to meet a demand of 10,000 units per year. All this can make for an overall expensive program. Figure 1 provides a cost comparison. 

Recreational surfaces must provide certain performance characteristics with acceptable costs, lifetimes, and appearance. Arbitrary but useful distinctions may be made for classification purposes, depending on the principal function a covering intended primarily to provide an attractive surface for private leisure activities, eg, patio surfaces a surface designed for service in a specific sport, eg, track surfaces or a grass-like surface designed for a broad range of heavy-duty recreational activities, including professional athletics, eg, artificial turf for outdoor sports. 

Traceability is achieved by coding items and their records such that you can trace an item back to the records at any time in its life. The chain can be easily lost if an item goes outside your control. If, for example, you provide an item on loan to a development organization and it is returned some time later, without a certified record of what was done to it, you have no confidence that the item is in fact the same one, unless it has some distinguishing features the inspection history is now invalidated because the operations conducted on the item were not certified. Traceability is only helpful when the chain remains unbroken. It can also be costly to maintain. The system of traceability that you maintain should be carefully thought out so that it is economic. There is little point in maintaining an elaborate traceability system for the once in a lifetime event when you need it, unless your very survival, or society s survival, depends upon it. 

The cost of PV electricity is largely determined by four factors cost of the PV modules, the efficiency of converting sunlight to electricity, the balance-of-sys-tem costs, and the lifetime of the systems. There are many combinations of these factors that provide about the same cost of electricity. Modules are now available that are designed to last at least thirty years. 

A final assessment is difficult as the number of studies on lifetime costs of HIV/AIDS is very small, and the last few years have seen only few publications in that field. However, with an increasing life expectancy due to HAART, we can expect that the provider lifetime COI will strongly increase. 

The net profit is the total income minus operating costs minus depreciation minus tax. The ROI is often calculated for the anticipated best year of the project the year in which the profit is greatest. This criterion is also used for small investments. In general, acceptable ROT are about 20 %, but typical values are difficult to give. Both POT and ROI provide a one-moment-in-time view and do not take into account future cash flows, which may not be constant in the lifetime of the venture. 

Prior to describing the possible applications of laser-diode fluorometry, it is important to understand the two methods now used to measure fluorescence lifetimes these being the time-domain (Tl)/4 5 24 and frequency-domain (FD) or phase-modulation methods.(25) In TD fluorometry, the sample is excited by a pulse of light followed by measurement of the time-dependent intensity. In FD fluorometry, the sample is excited with amplitude-modulated light. The lifetime can be found from the phase angle delay and demodulation of the emission relative to the modulated incident light. We do not wish to fuel the debate of TD versus FD methods, but it is clear that phase and modulation measurements can be performed with simple and low cost instrumentation, and can provide excellent accuracy with short data acquisition times. 

Figure 12.20 shows the structure of the side-window circular cage type and linear focused head-on type of photomultiplier which are both preeminent in fluorescence studies. The lower cost of side-window tubes tends to favor their use for steady-state studies, whereas the ultimate performance for lifetime studies is probably at present provided by linear focused devices. In both types internal current amplification is achieved by virtue of secondary electron emission from discrete dynode stages, usually constructed of copper-beryllium (CuBe) alloy, though gallium-phosphide (GaP) first dynodes have been used to obtain higher gains. 

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