Abstract
The effectiveness of the national/regional healthcare system is one of the keys to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In the face of this unknown pandemic, where the healthcare system should continue to be promoted and improved are crucial decision issues. In the past, most studies have used the subjective opinions of experts for analysis and decision-making processes when investigating complicated decision-making problems. However, such decision-making processes are easily influenced by experts’ preferences. Therefore, this research proposes a soft computing technology that integrates CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) with the modified VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje in Serbian, meaning multicriteria optimization and compromise solution (modified VIKOR) technique to reduce the impact of expert preference. In order to cope with the fact that COVID-19 has spread globally and to discover problems quickly and effectively, this study uses the global health security (GHS) index as the evaluation framework and conducts overall discussions in 195 countries/regions around the world. It is verified that the technology of soft computing can be used for continuous promotion and improvement of the national/regional healthcare system. This technology facilitates decision makers to know the gap of performance between the current healthcare system and the aspiration level. Finally, based on these gaps, we provide management advice to help improve these systems.
Highlights
The CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) model is used to determine the weights of the evaluation indicators, while the modified VIKOR model is used for evaluation and improvement of national healthcare systems
Healthcare capacity refers to the capabilities of the local clinics, hospitals, and municipal caregiving centers; healthcare management is the readiness of local healthcare policies and personnel; healthcare accessibility is the overall assessment of an area’s healthcare coverage, out-of-pocket health expenditures per capita, skilled birth attendants, and prioritization of healthcare services to healthcare workers; interdisciplinary communication indicates the communications with healthcare workers during a public health emergency; infection control refers to the area’s healthcare-associated infection (HCAI) monitoring and personal protective equipment (PPE) supply capacity; difficulty of adopting new technology refers to that area’s acceptance of new medical technologies
The proposed soft computation technique is combined with CRITIC operations and treats the entire world as one system to confirm the objective weights of the criteria
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Many studies have shown that increasing the basic capacity and quality of the national health facilities is important in the fight against COVID-19, directly impacting the ability to control the infection and having some influence on the safety of the whole country [8,9,10]. The gap between the current performance level of the national medical and healthcare system and the desired level is confirmed, so that each country can clearly know how to achieve better results This method can effectively remedy the limitations of the past evaluation methods by avoiding the dilemma of having to “select good apples from among the rotten apples” [23,24].
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