Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for Health Care Decision Making – overview of guidelines

Abstract

Multidimensional context of decision making in health care implies the need for structured approach which can be supported by Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Despite the fact that MCDA is more widely discussed and used in health care decision making there are still only a few publications available on guidelines and best practice on conducting good quality research. This paper aims to compare the published guidelines for conducting and implementing MCDA in health care decision making. Five most recent publications (either guidelines or reviews) were identified. All publications framed MCDA into a continuous step-by-step process, which should start with defining the decision problem followed by selecting criteria, measuring the performance, choosing the method and conducting scoring and weighting, aggregating values and weights, conducting sensitivity analysis and presenting the results. This review identifies key steps and methods used in MCDA as reported in guidelines. We aimed to compare publications and report on well recognized and most often adopted approaches and tools in MCDA.