A multi-criteria decision model for assessing health and self-care ability

Abstract

Population ageing together with the greater prevalence of multimorbidity add to the need for and complexity of healthcare services. This makes it important to encourage and empower patients with chronic diseases to take care of themselves. An associated goal of such efforts is to significantly reduce the burden on healthcare systems and positively impact patients' health outcomes and quality of life. The paper presents a multi-criteria decision model for assessing the health and self-care of patients with chronic diseases in the home environment. The model is based on the DEX methodology and was tested on ten cases. The model assists with the timely recognition of relevant symptoms and signs in decision-making about health and self-care. It can be used to promote patients taking on an active role with respect to caring for their health and well-being. The model could be integrated into self-care processes. It might also serve as a basis for an interprofessional approach to supporting older patients with chronic diseases living as fully and independently as possible in the environment in which they feel most comfortable. KeywordsMulti-criteria decision-making • DEX methodology • Healthcare • Self-care • Home environment • Patient empowerment B Marija Milavec Kapun

A self-care process model for patients with chronic noncommunicable diseases

“…We believe that the proposed process is critical to the delivery of telehealth services, since it reminds both providers and patients of the importance of their active role. By integrating individual digital solutions into the self-care process, such as digitally supporting patients in making decisions about self-care (see 23 ) or selfmanaging a specific condition (see, 33 ) patients will feel more confident and be able to take better care of themselves. With the support of digitally literate health professionals, patients would be able to choose the tool or digital support that best fits their health status, health and well-being goals and lifestyle, so that they can take optimal care of their health and well-being.…”

“…The expert group was also involved in the next stage of development, which involved a theoretical and conceptual verification of a multi-criteria decision-making model to support patients' self-care, which is published elsewhere. 23 The members of the group were two nurses (bachelor and master degrees), a general practitioner, a psychologist and a sociologist. The process was also presented to the patients who were involved in the validation of the mentioned decision-making model.…”

Emergent task allocation and incentives: an agent-based model

“…The main aim of this paper is to study organizations with bottom-up allocation of decision making tasks (e.g., operational or procurement decisions) and to analyze the effects of the incentive mechanism in place in the organization as well as task complexity on performance. The notion of decision making tasks is broad, extending its relevance to various fields, including social dynamics and team resilience (Massari et al 2023), healthcare (Kapun et al 2023), as well as product development processes (Ma and Nakamori 2005). 1 The model considers agents who represent organizational departments comprised of human decision makers, and together, the agents represent an organization with decentralized decision making.…”

60 years of OR in Slovenia: development from a first conference to a vibrant community

“…Population ageing together with greater prevalence of multimorbidity adds to the need for complex healthcare services. A multi-criteria decision model for assessing health and self-care ability is proposed by Milavec Kapun et al ( 2023 ). The structure of the Hungarian insurance market operated as a monopoly market until 1986 and has seen major changes since then.…”