ABSTRACT
Healthcare decisions, whether they are made by individuals (such as physicians or patients), in committees on behalf of the general population, or by pharmaceutical companies making strategic decisions about their pipelines, invariably require choices between different courses of actions characterized by multiple and often conflicting objectives, and may involve a variety of stakeholders with different goals. In these circumstances, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) can help to avoid suboptimal choices.
This chapter provides a brief overview of MCDA and its applications in healthcare decision making, summarizes the steps involved in conducting an MCDA, and illustrates these with an MCDA used to support individuals to choose between contraceptive methods.
