Development of Agenda for Pharmaceutical Care Service Research and Development using the Analytical Hierarchy Process

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Although the importance of pharmaceutical care service has been growing to meet the needs of customers with the improvement of clinical and humanistic outcomes, there was not a systematic strategy to promote research in Korea. The aim of this study was to suggest the core agendas for pharmaceutical care services research and development (R&D) considering priorities. METHODS: Based on desk researches, we developed R&D agendas for the needs of improving pharmaceutical care services in the area of institution, community, and public health. To determine the priority of agendas in developing pharmaceutical care service, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis was performed by the 14 experts. Criteria and subcriteria were assessed for significance by pairwise comparisons. Then, agendas were evaluated for importance according to each subcriteria, and rank ordered considering the weight calculated by multiplying the importance scores of the criteria and the subcriteria. RESULTS: We derived 25 agendas including 13 for institutional pharmaceutical care service, 8 for community pharmaceutical care service, and 4 for public-health related pharmaceutical care service. AHP model was constructed based on 4 criteria and 8 subcriteria by a hierarchical structure. From the AHP survey, the ‘Development of pharmaceutical care service for metabolic and chronic disease’ agenda accounted for the highest priority. CONCLUSION: We have developed the R&D agendas of the pharmaceutical care service which should be promoted. The results should be utilized by the government to nationally support the development of the standards and relevant regulations related to pharmaceutical care services in Korea.