A Systematic Approach for Evaluating and Selecting Healthcare Waste Treatment Devices using OWCM-CODAS and Triangular Neutrosophic Sets

Abstract

Healthcare is a fundamental aspect of human life, impacting individuals, communities, and societies. Investing in healthcare infrastructure, services, and education is essential for fostering a healthy, thriving population. Healthcare waste management is a critical aspect of public health, and it requires a concerted effort from healthcare facilities, governments, and communities to ensure that waste is managed in a way that minimizes risks to human health and the environment. This paper proposes a hybrid methodology combining the Opinion Weight Criteria Method (OWCM) and the Combinative Distance-Based Assessment (CODAS) within the framework of Triangular Neutrosophic Sets (TNS) to evaluate and select the optimal healthcare waste treatment devices. The proposed methodology balances various conflicting criteria and incorporates uncertainty in expert assessments to ensure a robust decision-making process. The paper also provides a comprehensive review of healthcare waste management devices and highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to healthcare waste management. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study involving evaluating healthcare waste treatment devices based on different factors such as economic, environmental, technological, and social aspects. The results show that the OWCM-CODAS methodology, integrated with TNS, effectively evaluates and ranks healthcare waste treatment devices based on multiple criteria. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates the robustness of the proposed model, and the results indicate that the model's performance and the relative ranking of the alternatives are not sensitive to changes in the threshold parameter τ within the tested range.