Assessing the factors of blockchain technology-enabled hospitals using an integrated interval-valued q-rung orthopair fuzzy decision-making model

Abstract

In the current era, blockchain technology (BT) has emerged as a novel technique to maintain the operations of healthcare management systems. Assessment of blockchain technology (BT)-enabled hospitals can be considered as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem because of the existence of several criteria. The aim of this study is to develop a hybrid MCDM method for evaluating the factors of multi-criteria BT-enabled hospital selection problem under interval-valued q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets (IVq-ROFSs). For this purpose, a weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS) model is presented with the combination of IVq-ROF interaction aggregation operators, the standard deviation (SD)-based model and pivot pairwise relative criteria importance assessment (PIPRECIA) tool called IV-q-ROF-SD-PIPRECIA-WASPAS model within the context of IVq-ROFSs. For this purpose, some new IVq-ROF interaction aggregation operators are developed with their desirable characteristics. Next, the standard deviation-based model and PIPRECIA model on IVq-ROFSs are proposed to obtain the final weight of criteria, whereas the rank-based formula is presented to determine the decision experts’ weights with IVq-ROF information. The presented IV-q-ROF-SD-PIPRECIA-WASPAS model is applied on a case study of BT-enabled hospitals assessment, which confirms its applicability and usefulness. Sensitivity analysis and comparative discussion have been performed to reveal the consistency, robustness and efficiency of the presented model. The BT-enabled hospital-II with highest UD (0.4453) has emerged as the best choice among a set of BT-enabled hospitals. The factor "flexibilty" with highest weight (0.0898) value followed that the scalability (0.0809), transaction speed and accountability with same weight (0.0779) value, and network availability with weight (0.0771) for BT-enabled hospitals assessment. The final results conclude that the developed methodology can provide more accurate decisions while considering multiple indicators and input uncertainties.