PNAS – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/
(Accessed 8 March 2014)

A priority-setting aid for new vaccine candidates
Charles Phelpsa,b, Guruprasad Madhavanc,1, Kinpritma Sanghac, Rino Rappuolid, Rita R. Colwelle,f, Rose Marie Martinezc, Patrick Kelleyc, and Lonnie King
Author Affiliations
Abstract
Policy and investment decisions regarding new health technologies are often complex. They require a careful balancing of multiple perspectives and differing objectives. On some occasions, policymakers or analysts approaching these decisions have access to cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit analyses to help guide their decisions, but almost invariably such analyses are inadequate.

Recent advances in decision-support systems have offered ways to embed a range of different preferences and parameters into formal modeling structures, known as multicriteria decision analysis. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has released a software tool called SMART Vaccines, short for Strategic Multi-Attribute Ranking Tool for Vaccines. This early-stage prototype—the use of which needs to be evaluated by interested parties—is grounded on multiattribute utility theory (see screenshot in Fig. 1). The software and associated reports in the Ranking Vaccines series can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.nap.edu/smartvaccines (1, 2).