The role of MCDA in health research priority setting

Abstract

Health research priority-setting exercises aim to maximize the impact of investments in health research. An increasing number of priority-setting exercises for health research have taken place in the past two decades. These exercises have been conducted for various areas of health research and at various levels (global, regional, national, local and institutional). In this chapter, we discuss the similarities and differences between health research priority setting and health intervention priority setting, and we describe the current methodologies used in health research priority setting and the role of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) therein. We provide three concrete suggestions for future methodological development in the field of health research priority setting: (1) recognize that many of the methodologies used to set health research priorities apply MCDA, (2) make use of well-established approaches or best practices for health research priority setting and (3) study in more detail the differences between health intervention and health research priority setting.