Title: Analytic hierarchy process as a tool for group evaluation of healthcare equipment

Authors: Stanislav Peregrin; Josef Jablonsky

Addresses: Department of Mathematical Methods and Managerial Informatics, Faculty of Management, University of Prešov, Ul. Konštantínova 16, 080 01 Prešov, Slovakia ' Department of Econometrics, Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, University of Economics, Prague, W. Churchill Sq. 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic

Abstract: The use of healthcare technology, which effectively assists in diagnosing diseases, significantly increases comfort and satisfaction of the patients. Prices increase with rising quality and offered possibilities. Since purchase of any equipment in healthcare is a significant expense, especially for a private surgery, it is necessary to carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of each decision. The aim of this study is to evaluate healthcare equipment in electrocardiography, when the result is determined by a group of decision makers. To obtain individual decisions we applied the AHP to the views of any decision makers. Subsequently these decisions are aggregated into one group vector with the assistance of the AMM and WAMM. The WAMM, uses the view significance of each decision maker during the process of aggregating weights. This study also contains an overview of the past AHP applications in the healthcare and health technology assessment from other authors.

Keywords: analytical hierarchy process; AHP; group decision making; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; healthcare equipment; healthcare technology assessment; HTA; electrocardiography; ECG; weighted AMM; arithmetic mean method; WAMM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2016.075746

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2016 Vol.10 No.2/3/4, pp.124 - 141

Received: 22 Dec 2014
Accepted: 15 Oct 2015
Published online: 01 Apr 2016 *

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