Multi-criteria decision making - An approach to setting priorities in health care

The objective of this paper is to present a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to support public health decision making that takes into co nsideration the fuzziness of the decision goals and the behavioural aspect of the decision maker. The approach is used to analyse the process of healt h technology procurement in a University Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . The method, known as TODIM, relies on evaluating alternatives with a set of decision criteria assessed using an ordinal scale. Fuzziness in generati ng criteria scores and weights or conflicts caused by dealing with differen t viewpoints of a group of decision makers (DMs) are solved using fuzzy set aggregation rules. The results suggested that MCDM models, incorporating f uzzy set approaches, should form a set of tools for public hearth decision making analysis, particularly when there are polarized opinions and conflic ting objectives from the DM group. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Lt d.