Futurelearn-GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY (2)

Futurelearn-GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY (1)

Feedback loops don’t always balance. In the UK the population is relatively stable over time, but an ageing population already creates policy problems such as funding health and welfare services for the elderly. In contrast, births and deaths do not balance in South Africa which has a relatively young population.
http://www.systemdynamics.org/what-is-s/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

Multi-Level System
Macro Level-National Government
Lower Macro Level-Ministry of Health, Department for Communities and Local Government
Upper Meso-Local Health Authority, Local Council
Lower Meso-Ambulances, GPs, A&E, Hospitals, … Social Care Unit, Care Home
Upper Micro-(Sam + District Nurse), (Sam + Doctor), … (Sam + Social Worker), (Sam + Voluntary Worker)
Micro-Sam, District Nurse, Doctor, … Sam, Social Worker, Voluntary Workers
Systemic problems and policy  -the bed blocking problem
Department of Health statistics show that over the course of a year more than 680,000 elderly people treated by the NHS languish on wards for weeks, even though they are well enough to be looked after in a care home or at home with social services support. … Failure by ministers to tackle the problem, the loss of almost 50,000 council and private care home beds over the last five years, rising demand and social services budget cuts are blamed for the shambles. … Meanwhile, cancelled operations – directly linked to a lack of beds – have soared from 3,733 during the first quarter of 2000 to 4,881 this year.1According to the Independent newspaper, the opposition Labour Party blames the delays and bed-blocking on cuts of £3.5 billion to social care budgets since 2010 causing more elderly people to be admitted to hospital instead of being cared for at home. The problem is that the NHS pays when patients are in hospital, but when they are in community care the local council pays for them. The NHS and councils have different staff, separate budgets, and different priorities. Also, when a patient is transferred to a hospital in another county, another NHS trust must pay for them. To further complicate matters, if an elderly patient from one town is admitted to hospital in another they cannot access community care services there because they are not a resident. Instead, they must wait for someone from their local authority to come to assess them and organise care in their own community. This process can take a long time and it means patients can be stuck blocking a hospital bed for weeks. It is estimated that bed blocking by elderly patients costs the NHS £820 million a year
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-feels-the-strain-as-hospital-bed-blocking-by-elderly-patients-hits-record-levels-10125422.htmlhttp://www.itv.com/news/2016-05-26/delays-in-discharging-older-patients-costs-nhs-820-million-a-year/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-78550/Bed-blocking-elderly-patients-rises.html
Complex Systems
There is a growing consensus that the science of complex systems will increasingly play a role in policy generation and evaluation.
There is no agreement on how the word ‘complex’ should be defined, but there is wide consensus that complexity can arise in systems that have one or more of the following properties:
many heterogeneous parts, e.g. a city, a company, markets, riots
dynamics emerge from interactions of agents, e.g. traffic, markets
sensitivity to initial conditions, e.g. weather systems, investments
path-dependence – history matters, e.g. elections, famine, war
network connectivities, e.g. gossip, epidemics, copying, banker networks
adaptation to changing environments, e.g. business, opinions, agriculture
co-evolving subsystems, e.g. land-use and transport, virus software
feedback loops, e.g. house prices, opinion polls, critical tweets, copying
reflexivity, e.g. people may respond to predictions by doing the opposite
globality – everything affects everything else, e.g. biofuel and starvation.

http://www.paulormerod.com/
http://connectedthebook.com/
http://barabasi.com/book/linked|
DataGotham @datagotham
https://www.youtube.com/user/DataGotham
http://101.datascience.community/tag/data-gotham/