Since project managers still face problems in managing interorganizational R&D projects, it is a promising approach to manage these projects project-culturally-aware. However, an important prerequisite for a project-culture-aware management is that the involved individual organizations pursue a collaborative strategy. Therefore, our article provides a conceptual approach including a new tool, the Collaborative Iron Triangle, which supports both project sponsors and managers in different phases of the collaboration process to pursue a collaborative strategy in interorganizational R&D projects.

Objectives: The purpose of this project was to evaluate local decision support tools used in the Danish hospital sector from a theoretical and an empirical point of view.

Methods: The use of local decision support was evaluated through questionnaires sent to all county health directors, all hospital managers, and all heads of clinical departments in cardiology, orthopedic surgery, and intensive care. In addition, respondents were asked to submit whatever decision support tools they were using (including mini-HTAs, other forms or checklists, and special procedures for decision making concerning new health technologies). A theoretical analysis of the decision support tools (decision theory) was performed as well as a comparison with the business case method used in private companies. Finally, the Danish mini-HTA was compared with foreign production and use of HTA and HTA-like assessments as local decision support.

Results: The response rate was high (87 percent, 94 percent, 85 percent, respectively). We collected sixty different forms (of which forty-nine were mini-HTAs) and twenty variants of written procedures. We found theoretical and empirical evidence that local involvement in the process of making the HTA could be important for the use of the results from the HTA and for the process of implementing the new technology.

Conclusions: Doing mini-HTA in hospitals seems to balance the need for quality and depth with the limited time and resources for assessment.

Composite milk somatic cell counts (CMSCC) from four separate datasets, containing 3338, 350, 1408 and 1404 herds, were used. All herds were enrolled in the Norwegian Dairy Herd Recording System (NDHRS). The aim was to investigate associations between CMSCC at calving or prior to drying-off and future CMSCC in the remaining or subsequent lactation. CMSCC was determined using Fossomatic 5000® cell counters (Foss Electric, Hillerød, Denmark) according to IDF recommendations (International Dairy Federation, 1984) and a natural logarithmic transformation of the CMSCC data (lnCMSCC) was performed. Results obtained were arranged according to parity and lactation stage and regression models and general linear mixed models were applied, the latter model to account for clustering between herds. The best associations between CMSCC at calving or prior to drying-off and future CMSCC in the remaining or subsequent lactation were found by using at least two CMSCC test days after calving or prior to drying-off. The geometric mean of the second and third or the first three CMSCC test days explained 50% of the variation in future CMSCC in first parity cows. This information was accessible at 151 days in milk (DIM) in bimonthly tested herds, and at 87 DIM for monthly tested herds. There was not a large difference using two or three single consecutive weighted CMSCC test days compared with the geometric mean of two or three CMSCC test days. Our findings indicate the need of using at least two CMSCC test days and, if only one CMSCC test day is used, it should be obtained after 14 d post-calving or preferably after 30 DIM.