- Analyzing and Improving Technology Investment Decisions at Hospitals The goal of this project is to improve technology investment decisions at hospitals by developing and field- testing a novel data-to-decision methodology. Hospitals spend a substantial amount of their budgets on medical technologies and many hospitals seek guidance on how to better allocate their resources. Deciding whether, and when, to purchase which technologies is complex due to uncertainties about financial and medical outcomes, dynamic interdependencies among difficult-to-quantify factors, conflicting objectives, and a multi-level decision process with numerous stakeholders. Inefficient and ineffective investment decisions represent a significant problem because medical technology expenditures are a major contributor to the high and ever-rising health care costs in the United States. This project uses qualitative data analysis, system dynamics modeling and multi-objective decision analysis to improve technology investment decisions in hospitals with a focus on robotic surgery, the project's pilot technology.
Medical technology investments at hospitals have a significant effect on costs and health outcomes for the U.S. health care system and are responsible for over 50% of the growth in health care spending. In addition, many hospitals are in financial distress and require tools to better allocate capital for technology investments. With this project, we aim to analyze the complex interdependencies between medical, financial, and human factors that influence hospitals'technology investments and propose to develop a novel data-to-decision methodology.
