A new TOPSIS-based approach to evaluate the economic indicators in the healthcare system and the impact of biotechnology

Abstract The healthcare system plays an increasingly important role in driving a country’s economy and vice versa. Several factors influence the efficient functioning of the healthcare system, such as availability of resources, medical equipment, technology, socioeconomic status of patients, and the overall economy of the country. Translational biotechnology is a significant contributor to the development of advanced healthcare systems. It is crucial to evaluate the economic impact of the integration of biotechnology for improving healthcare services. TOPSIS (technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution) is a technique popularly used in operations research for multiattribute decision-making problems. The central idea of this method is to find an ideal solution and an antiideal solution by comparing a set of alternatives, based on geometric distance (Euclidean). The ideal solution should have the shortest Euclidean distance from the most ideal solution and the longest Euclidean distance from the negative-ideal solution. This chapter presents a novel TOPSIS-based decision-making method that makes use of the supremum metric to evaluate the most important economic indicator in the healthcare system. The outcome suggests that gross domestic product per capita is the most significant indicator. The outcome is validated using a sensitivity investigation. This outcome may further aid in the assessment of the impact of translational biotechnology on the economy.