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Patients with malignant brain tumors and deep venous thrombosis (DVT) of the lower extremities are at high risk of developing pulmonary embolism (PE). We developed a Markov model to compare the cost-effectiveness of two strategies to prevent PE in such patients: intra-vena-caval bird's nest filter (BNF) with anticoagulation versus anticoagulation alone. Using the benchmark of 50,000 US dollars per quality-adjusted life year (QALY), BNF was not cost-effective in this population as it reduced the rate of PE at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of 198,852 dollars per QALY gained. However, after adjusting the model to reflect the 5-year mortality rate of hypothetical breast cancer patients, BNF was more effective and less expensive than anticoagulation alone. BNF was effective in reducing the rate of PE but was not cost-effective for patients with brain tumors. BNF could be cost-effective for patients with longer life expectancies.

About 40% of the U.S. primary energy is consumed in the buildings. Therefore, to manage the energy consumption and its usages pattern, for instance, the U.S. state of California mandated Zero Net Energy buildings by 2020 for the residential sector (22% of the U.S. primary energy). Moreover, towards this goal, U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office is trying to develop techniques to improve the efficiency of buildings. Home Energy Management (HEM) may be used to improve the energy consumption in the residential buildings. However, the cost, scalability, and flexibility of the software and hardware architectures available, have increased the time-tomarket and have made HEMs hard to penetrate the consumer market. To solve these limitations, in this paper, we have presented a novel HEM platform, which utilizes a low power IEEE 802.15.4 standard to monitor and control all the appliances in a house. Moreover, it utilizes Service-Oriented Architecture and Devices Profile for Web Services to implement the monitoring and controlling algorithms and therefore may significantly improve the scalability and flexibility of the platform. Also, some other features like: plug-n-play capability, remote access feature, and open source architecture are implemented in this platform. Finally, a table-top prototype of the HEM platform is demonstrated in the paper.Index Terms-Home energy automation, Energy management, Software as a service, Control as a Service.

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