Healthcare Innovation: Will COVID-19 be a Transformative Experience?

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is one of the five pillars of Islam and a duty which Muslims must perform—once in a lifetime—if they are physically and financially able to do so. In Morocco, from where thousands of pilgrims travel to Mecca every year, the Hajj often represents the culmination of years of preparation and planning, both spiritual and logistical. Pilgrims often describe their journey to Mecca as a transformative experience. Upon successfully completing the pilgrimage and returning home, pilgrims must negotiate their new status—and the expectations that come with it—within the mundane and complex reality of everyday life. There are many ambivalences and tensions to be dealt with, including managing the community expectations of piety and moral behavior. On a personal level, pilgrims struggle between staying on the right path, faithful to their pilgrimage experience, and straying from that path as a result of human imperfection and the inability to sustain the ideals inspired by pilgrimage. By ethnographically studying the everyday lives of Moroccans after their return from Mecca, this article seeks to answer the questions: how do pilgrims encounter a variety of competing expectations and demands following their pilgrimage and how are their efforts received by members of their community? How do they shape their social and religious behavior as returned pilgrims? How do they deal with the tensions between the ideals of Hajj and the realities of daily life? In short, this article scrutinizes the religious, social and personal ramifications for pilgrims after the completion of Hajj and return to their community. My research illustrates that pilgrimage contributes to a process of self-formation among pilgrims, with religious and non-religious dimensions, which continues long after Hajj is over and which operates within, and interacts with, specific social contexts.

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Advancing UK Regulatory Science Strategy in the Context of Global Regulation: a Stakeholder Survey

Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science ◽

10.1007/s43441-021-00263-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Samantha Cruz Rivera ◽

Barbara Torlinska ◽

Eliot Marston ◽

Alastair K. Denniston ◽

Kathy Oliver ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Pay For Performance ◽

Regulatory Science ◽

International Strategy ◽

Free Text ◽

The European Union ◽

Accurate Definition ◽

Definition Of ◽

Healthcare Innovation ◽

The Uk ◽

Medium Enterprises

Abstract Background The UK’s transition from the European Union creates both an urgent need and key opportunity for the UK and its global collaborators to consider new approaches to the regulation of emerging technologies, underpinned by regulatory science. This survey aimed to identify the most accurate definition of regulatory science, to define strategic areas of the regulation of healthcare innovation which can be informed through regulatory science and to explore the training and infrastructure needed to advance UK and international regulatory science. Methods A survey was distributed to UK healthcare professionals, academics, patients, health technology assessment agencies, ethicists and trade associations, as well as international regulators, pharmaceutical companies and small or medium enterprises which have expertise in regulatory science and in developing or applying regulation in healthcare. Subsequently, a descriptive quantitative analyses of survey results and directed thematic analysis of free-text comments were applied. Results Priority areas for UK regulatory science identified by 145 participants included the following: flexibility: the capability of regulations to adapt to novel products and target patient outcomes; co-development: collaboration across sectors, e.g. patients, manufacturers, regulators, and educators working together to develop appropriate training for novel product deployment; responsiveness: the preparation of frameworks which enable timely innovation required by emerging events; speed: the rate at which new products can reach the market; reimbursement: developing effective tools to track and evaluate outcomes for “pay for performance” products; and education and professional development. Conclusions The UK has a time-critical opportunity to establish its national and international strategy for regulatory science leadership by harnessing broader academic input, developing strategic cross-sector collaborations, incorporating patients’ experiences and perspectives, and investing in a skilled workforce.

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Healthcare innovation

International Journal of Healthcare Management ◽

10.1179/2047970012z.00000000036 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 187-188 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Susan Hamer ◽

Thomas Plochg ◽

Paulo Moreira

Keyword(s):

Healthcare Innovation

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Healthcare Innovation Point-of-Care Technologies Conference

IEEE Pulse ◽

10.1109/mpul.2014.2304874 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 64-65

Keyword(s):

Point Of Care ◽

Healthcare Innovation

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Death: The Ultimate Transformative Experience

10.31231/osf.io/5r7bv ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Evan Thompson

Keyword(s):

Family Members ◽

The State ◽

Transformative Experience ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Whole Process ◽

Fundamental Significance ◽

Hospice Workers

Death is the ultimate transformative experience. “Death” here means not the state of being dead but rather the whole process of dying, culminating in the end of a person’s life. Death is “epistemically transformative” because you cannot know what it is like to die until you experience dying and this experience can enable you to understand things in a new way. Death is “personally transformative” because it changes how you experience yourself in ways that you cannot fully grasp before these changes happen. At the same time, death is unlike any other transformative experience. It is final, all encompassing, and has fundamental significance. Its power to reveal new truths about your self and your life is exceptional. It offers prospective and retrospective perspectives that differ from those of any other experience. This chapter examines death by describing its unique characteristics as the ultimate transformative experience. The practical benefit of this perspective is to suggest new philosophical resources for physicians, hospice workers, policy makers, and family members who care for dying loved ones.

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Ecstatic Hymns: The Hymn’s Role in Encountering Mystery in Liturgical Worship

Lumen et Vita ◽

10.6017/lv.v8i2.10507 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Megan Heeder

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

Human Person ◽

Transformative Experience ◽

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The Mass’s music enables us to encounter God by being drawn out of ourselves by beauty. Thus, hymns form us ecstatically by engaging the intellectual, physical, and spiritual elements of our human nature to better know and love God as Mystery and Beauty Engaging the whole human person, singing enables us to offer God all of ourselves and so encounter God as Mystery. Drawing on the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar writes, this paper will reflect on how the beauty of song invites us into the Mystery of Beauty: God. Singing a hymn of praise is a transformative experience of beauty, which draws us out of ourselves, placing us in a posture in which we can encounter and be formed by God, and so more fully be able to encounter God, others, and ourselves.

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