Adaptive and intelligent educational systems Distance learning Artificial intelligence applied to intelligent tutoring systems a b s t r a c tIn an adaptive and intelligent educational system (AIES), the process of learning pedagogical policies according the students needs fits as a Reinforcement Learning (RL) problem. Previous works have dem onstrated that a great amount of experience is needed in order for the system to learn to teach properly, so applying RL to the AIES from scratch is unfeasible. Other works have previously demonstrated in a the oretical way that seeding the AIES with an initial value function learned with simulated students reduce the experience required to learn an accurate pedagogical policy. In this paper we present empirical results demonstrating that a value function learned with simulated students can provide the AIES with a very accurate initial pedagogical policy. The evaluation is based on the interaction of more than 70 Computer Science undergraduate students, and demonstrates that an efficient and useful guide through the contents of the educational system is obtained.

The healthcare environment aims at improving and quality in health management, with trends and practices in hospitals, institutions, clinics, laboratories and companies in this segment, with the purpose of bringing more comfort and better conditions in the care of patients. Faced with the difficulties of this area, it becomes increasingly important to reduce waste and improve processes. The goal of this paper is to carry out a systematic review of literature on the topic lean manufacturing in healthcare. The data were obtained from four online databases Web of Science, Science Direct, Emerald Insight and Scopus. Articles indexed in the last 10 years were selected (2006-2016). To select articles, an advanced search was performed using the Boolean expression "E" that combined keywords for better specific results. Professionals working in the health segment will have the concepts and applied techniques, in addition to the work indexed in recent years, which will facilitate the research and development of the work, translating into increased efficiency and ultimately, improvement for the population. Despite the importance of the theme, there are few lean manufacturing jobs applied in the healthcare environment. This research  can  stimulate future studies due to its applicability for the improvement of health services.

This article shows a proposal to improve patient´s care time through the application of Lean Manufacturing methodology in an Adult Emergency Department of a Hospital in La Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia. The main problems observed are related to the excessive time that patients must wait for treatment compared to the standards established by the District Health Department. Firstly, the current state of the processes is registered and analyzed. After that the main factors that cause delays are identified and finally a methodology is proposed to improve the present situation. The results shown that the processes to improve are: inclusion in Triage (urgency classification system) and consultation, the process according to consultation and the patient exit order. The applicability of the proposal was evaluated through simulations using the Software Arena. The simulations show important improvements in patient`s waiting time and in consultation time.

This paper aims to demonstrate how simple initiatives on public health sector are able to improve quality on service level. One of the most important aspects considered on this case study was the potential and motivation within University Hospital IT team to achieve excellence. Thus, management improvement started from quality management techniques applied by IT members to enhance results. This qualitative study case based on quality program deployed comparative analysis from literature to hospital IT management real initiatives. Results contribution demonstrate that inclusion and the development of collaborative workgroups can make difference to work environment and quality of service.

El desarrollo de sistemas genéricos para tratamiento automático del lenguaje está limitado por la imposibilidad de tener disponible todo el conocimiento requerido para cualquier dominio de aplicación. Por ello, la solución propuesta en este trabajo se basa en el desarrollo de un sistema modular y multiforme que permita la incorporación de los distintos tipos de conocimiento lingüístico y extralingüístico. Con este fin, se ha elaborado una propuesta general de estructuración del conocimiento para la interpretación de textos, que proporciona un mecanismo de control flexible de los distintos procesos lingüísticos identificados y cuya funcionalidad se lleva a cabo empleando distintos tipos de tecnología de procesamiento del lenguaje natural (PLN). Para mostrar la potencialidad de la arquitectura definida se ha utilizado el dominio de aplicación del modelado conceptual de bases de datos (BD) a partir de textos.