The Analytic Hierarchy Process (ahp) and the User Need Elicitation in the Health Technology Assessment (hta)

The use of scientific quantitative methods to support decision making is becoming necessary in healthcare systems, especially for Health Technology Assessment (HTA), which is a particularly complex decision making processes. This paper, after introducing three case studies in which the AHP was used to elicit user needs, generalize the method employed, provides recommendations and discusses critical methodological aspects, which the authors consider crucial when applying AHP to user need elicitation studies in HTA. The users of medical devices can include patients, healthcare professionals (with very different specializations), hospital managers, politician and general public. The AHP proved to be an effective method to elicit user needs, especially if some adjustments to the hierarchy design and to the questionnaires layout are followed.