How should the community prioritise 'orphan drugs' in terms of public resourcing? These are drugs for diseases whose rarity makes the financial return too low to attract and sustain private investment? Jon Sussex and colleagues report* on a study in which MCDA was used as the framework to explore the views of experts and patients concerning the prioritisation of funding of Orphan Medicinal Products (OMPs).

The experts and patients arrived at a consensus set of eight criteria and then assigned individual weights to them.

With slight modification of the criteria to ensure all have the same (positive) orientation, we present an Annalisa using them and the average patient weights as default. Hypothetical options with hypothetical ratings on the eight criteria are presented, the main purpose being to facilitate the user's exploration of the framework. 

*Jon Sussex, Pierrick Rollet, Martina Garau, Claude Schmitt, Alastair Kent and Adam Hutchings (2013) Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to Value Orphan Medicines, Office of Health Economics Report 13/03. Available for download from OHE following registration.