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Development of a Decision Support Engine to Assist Patients with Hospital Selection

  • Patient Facing Systems
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Abstract

Hospital selection is a complicated decision-making process. Although patients have expressed greater desire to participate in decision-makings of their healthcare, it can be problematic for them to accumulate large amount of information and using it for making an optimal choice in hospital selection. The aim of this research is to develop a decision engine for hospital selection (DEHS) to support patients while accessing healthcare resources. DEHS applied the analytic hierarchy process and the geographic information system to aggregate different decision factors and spatial information. The results were evaluated through investigating the consistency of the preferences that users inputted, the degree that the results match patient choices, the satisfactions of users, and the helpfulness of the results. Data were collected for 3 months. One hundred and four users visited DEHS and 85.5 % of them used DEHS more than once. Recommendations of the institutes (36 %) was ranked as the primary decision factor that most users concerned. Sixty-seven percent of the sessions searched for hospitals and 33 % for clinics. Eighty-eight percent of the results matched the choices of patients. Eighty-three percent of the users agreed that the suggested results were satisfactory, and 70 % agreed that the information were helpful. The DEHS provides the patients with simple measurements and individualized list of suggested medical institutes, and allows them to make decisions based on credible information and consults the experiences of others at the same time. The suggested results were considered satisfactory and helpful.

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Acknowledgments

This research is sponsored by Ministry of Education, Taiwan, under the Grant AE-00-00-06.

Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Lichin Chen, Chih-Min Chan & Feipei Lai

  2. Department of Information Management, Tamkang University, Tamsui District, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Hung-Chang Lee

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Tunghai University, Xitun District, Taichung, Taiwan

    Yufang Chung

  4. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Feipei Lai

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Feipei Lai

Authors
  1. Lichin Chen
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  2. Chih-Min Chan
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  3. Hung-Chang Lee
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  4. Yufang Chung
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  5. Feipei Lai
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Correspondence to Lichin Chen.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Patient Facing Systems

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Chen, L., Chan, CM., Lee, HC. et al. Development of a Decision Support Engine to Assist Patients with Hospital Selection. J Med Syst 38, 59 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0059-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0059-4

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