Supporting the Project Portfolio Selection Decision of Research and Development Investments by Means of Multi-Criteria Resource Allocation Modelling

Abstract

The healthcare industry needs to carefully balance their research and development (R&D) project portfolios in terms of the diverse benefits, risks and costs of the technology they aim to develop. Although not common in healthcare, multi-criteria portfolio selection modelling can provide a structured and transparent approach to support decision-makers to share information on the performances of their R&D projects, to negotiate the necessary trade-offs to evaluate the projects and to arrive at a decision for an R&D project portfolio that decision-makers are committed to. In this chapter we illustrate how the Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique (MACBETH) approach, assisted by the recent portfolio module of the M-MACBETH decision support system, was used to build a model to select a portfolio of robotic innovations for minimal invasive surgical interventions. We show how these projects were prioritized according to their value for money and how the value of the R&D portfolio was maximized under a budget constraint and under the presence of interdependencies between projects that could affect their benefits, risks and/or costs.