Voting and priorities in health care decision making, portrayed through a group decision support system, using analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

Within the health care industry many decision making approaches and tools are used. This paper explores a new tool, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which permits both subjective and objective information to be considered in a decision. AHP has tremendous potential to solve both traditional and non-traditional health care problems. Its strength as a decision-making tool is its ability to combine both subjective and objective data. Application of AHP is discussed within the context of a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) model developed by Hatcher. The model is reviewed in limited detail, and readers are referred to the original article that defined and discussed the uniqueness and level of sophistication of GDSS applications in the health care industry. Health and medical delivery problems are discussed to highlight AHP requirements and the complexity of AHP applications. Health care applications are unique in that they lend themselves ideally to the use of computer data, image, voice, text, and multimedia concepts.

A Comparison of Analytic Hierarchy Process and Conjoint Analysis Methods in Assessing Treatment Alternatives for Stroke Rehabilitation

“…In the health economics literature, CA is the dominating methodology. However, although less known in health economics, the use of AHP in weighing multiple endpoints is increasingly being used and a series of papers [27][28][29] have been published in operations research and decision sciences. Both techniques are very useful to formally elicit patient preferences to be incorporated into HTA.…”

The analytic hierarchy process in medical and health care decision making: A literature review

“…Hatcher (1994) describes how the AHP can be included within a group decision support process (GDSS) and how the resulting system can be applied in a variety of health care decision making settings. Sloane et al (2002) discusses the applicability of the AHP for medical and hospital decision support and briefly describes three completed studies (reviewed below) and three on-going studies.…”

Methods and Rules of Voting and Decision: A Literature Review

“…AHP has tremendous potential to solve both traditional and non-traditional health care problems. Its strength as a decision-making tool is its ability to combine both subjective and objective data [45]. Thomas explores the meta-decision in the context of multicriterion group decisions, comparing two alternative procedures by building a simple multiattribute value model: group members may build individual preference orderings by solving the multicriterion problem on their own and then vote on the alternatives, or they may vote on the relative relevance of each criterion and then compose a group preference ordering with the results.…”