Health research priority setting processes assist researchers and policymakers in effectively targeting research that has the greatest potential public health benefit. Many different approaches to health research prioritization exist, but there is no agreement on what might constitute best practice. Moreover, because of the many different contexts for which priorities can be set, attempting to ...

In current clinical practice, priority-specific wait time targets are usually determined based on the consensus of medical specialists and health care administrators. The rationale behind this approach considers urgency but it does not consider efficient use resources patient volume associated with each priority class. we present here aims to determine in a systematic fashion that both respects...

Objectors on ethical grounds to the use of QALYs in priority-setting in public health care systems are here categorised as (1) those who reject all collective priority-setting as unethical; (2) those who accept the need for collective priority-setting but believe that it is contrary to medical ethics; (3) those who accept the need for collective priority-setting and do not believe that it is co...

Health policy and systems research (HPSR) has been identified as critical to scaling-up interventions to achieve the millennium development goals, but research priority setting exercises often do not address HPSR well. This paper aims to (i) assess current priority setting methods and the extent to which they adequately include HPSR and (ii) draw lessons regarding how HPSR priority setting can ...

OBJECTIVE Limited resources mean that decision-makers must set priorities among competing opportunities. Programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) is an economic approach that focuses on optimizing benefits with available resources. Accountability for reasonableness (A4R) is an ethics approach that focuses on ensuring fair priority-setting processes. PBMA and A4R have been used separatel...