Evaluation of countries' access to medical imaging devices by multi-criteria decision making techniques

Medical imaging devices are one of the key elements in ensuring the continuity of health services and in the management of high-risk diseases. This study was conducted to assess the performance of OECD and EU member/candidate countries in terms of access to medical imaging devices using multi-criteria decision-making techniques. In line with the data for three high-cost medical imaging devices (CT, MRI and PET) between 2018-2020, 26 countries were evaluated in the context of nine criteria. Countries' performance ranks (CoCoSo), classes (FlowSort) and similarities (K Means) were determined by three-stage analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that the most determining criterion in the performance of 26 countries is the number of PET imaging scans per thousand people; the two countries with the highest performance in access to medical imaging devices are the USA and South Korea, and the two countries with the lowest performance are Serbia and Hungary; Israel, Hungary and Turkey, which are among the five countries with the lowest performance rank and in the low performance group, are countries with similar structures and 15 countries are in the high performance group according to the average. Access to PET imaging equipment, in which countries experience the most inequalities, is considered to be one of the policy areas that require planning or strategy development. It is thought that the distribution of medical technology resources by taking into account population, disease burden and frequency of use of the device will improve inequalities in access.