A Model for Determining the Number of Health Technologies in the Health Systems: An Approach Combining Multiple Attributes Decision Making and Goal Programming

Abstract

In recent years, health technology policy-making science has gone beyond just a health technology assessment or systematic review or economic evaluation study and the science of operational research in decision making, i.e. multi-attributes and multi-objective decision-making has been included. Hence, currently, health technology policy-making follows a seven-step process. After a technology undergoes these steps and is proven that it is useful for the health system, it must be determined how many of it is needed in the health system. Determining the required number of health technologies is a challenge that remains to be considered. Therefore, this study  was designed to overcome this problem. The authors intend to introduce a multi-objective decision-making methodology considering the limited budget, to determine the number of technologies required to complete for the health technology policymaking cycle.