Please distribute...
You are hereby invited to our thirteenth "Evolution, Complexity and
Cognition (ECCO)" seminar of 2005:
A Cybernetic Approach to the
Organisation of the Public Health Service
by
Julien Libbrecht, Ph.D
(UVC-Brugmann)
Place: room 3C204 (building C, 3rd floor), VUB campus
Oefenplein
Time: Friday, May 6, at 17:30 h.
Abstract:
In the next few years all Western countries will be confronted
with both a qualitative and a quantitative increase of needs in the
public health service, because of the following reasons: 1) growth in
life expectation with three months per year; the ever increasing
older part of the population will need more care and more cure; 2)
expectation studies demonstrate a growth in chronic diseases which
need a lifelong follow-up. The conclusion must be that public health
will become ever more expensive and that the available means must be
used as carefully and as effectively as possible. The effectiveness
of organisation, as found in indicators like performance, is a means
for the optimal utilisation of available public sources. The
challenge for the coming years will be twofold: 1) How can we
organise care on the workfloor in a way that meets people's
different needs? 2) How can we build a public health care system
which meets the professionals' as well as the patients' needs in
the most optimal way?
Cybernetics can be of great help in developing models and
methods to optimize care and cure. The objective of the cybernetic
approach, first, is to understand care and cure as an interaction
(anatomy of interaction), second to understand how we can use that
interaction in the most effective way. This can be done by the
application of Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety and the
five-system model of Stafford Beer on care as interaction
system.
ECCO seminar
programme coming weeks
13 May: Johan Bollen: Self-organization of Document
Networks
20 May: Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis:
Closure and the modular evolution of matter
27 May: Lito Kyritsi: Systems
Modelling of Cancer
3 Jun: Laetitia De Jaegher: Towards
sustainable development: the precautionary principle as a call for a
new theory of law to support multi-dimensional governance
ECCO seminars normally take place each Friday at 17h30 in room
3C204 of the VUB Campus Etterbeek. Everyone interested is welcome.
The seminars are very interactive, with small groups (about 8-10
people). The intention is to discuss in depth the research being
proposed, and to look for interdisciplinary connections with other
ECCO-related themes. Seminars last about two hours, after which the
remaining participants go to take a drink or a snack in the Opinio
Caf� on the campus, to continue the discussion in a more relaxed
setting.
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
