Abstract
In the current literature, there are a clear lack of systems to assist in making decisions about the renewal of technology for healthcare equipment, which means that the limited capacity to invest in new equipment cannot usually be appropriately applied as determined by the care requirements of a community. This may have important repercussions for patients, such as the inability to offer treatment or diagnosis, having to delay treatment or diagnosis, increase the risk of patients and care staff of using obsolete equipment, and preventing early, accurate, and reliable diagnosis, all of which have effects on the quality of care to a community. This study therefore describes the first multicriteria model in a fuzzy environment to assist in decision making related to the renewal of healthcare equipment. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), which allows for ambiguities, uncertainties, and doubts inherent in real-world decision processes to be taken into account, was used to do this. The model produces a plan with actions to be taken depending on the obtained results. The model includes a novel methodology that consists of modifying the top–down technique to allow for the levels of priority for renewing healthcare equipment to be determined from judgements given by three experts. The model was validated by applying it to a set of medical devices, and we show the results for a surgical C-arm, an X-ray CT room, a neonatal ventilator, a defibrillator, and a video-colonoscope. A program was also created using the NI Labview software to process the model so that it could be applied with a user interface that acts quickly, simply, and intuitively.
Highlights
Healthcare technology in Spain is the oldest it has been for decades [1]
Given that there are few tools in the field of multicriteria decision making that work with fuzzy calculus, a new software was created in NI Labview that could process the methodology to be applied through a user interface that allows data to be gathered quickly, and intuitively
Among the few contributions that have used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques in the renewal of medical equipment were those of Faisal and Sharawi [54], who used the criteria support availability, performance, maintenance cost, age, equipment function, operation impact, and clinical acceptability in a model built with the AHP to obtain as a result a replacement priority index of devices
Summary
Healthcare technology in Spain is the oldest it has been for decades [1]. A number of societies and associations (The Spanish Society of Electromedicine and Clinical Engineering (SEEIC), the Spanish. There are, no precedents in the literature for applying fuzzy multicriteria techniques to the technological renewal of medical devices, and so the uncertainties, ambiguities, and inaccuracies inherent in the decision process have not so far been considered These deficiencies in systems to help make decisions for technological renewal in healthcare equipment mean that the limited capacity to invest in new equipment is not, in general, applied properly or satisfactorily in accordance with the care requirements of healthcare organizations. Given that there are few tools in the field of multicriteria decision making that work with fuzzy calculus, a new software was created in NI Labview that could process the methodology to be applied through a user interface that allows data to be gathered quickly, and intuitively It offers an action plan with the measures to be taken depending on the obtained results.
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