Multicriteria decision making for contract research organisation choice in the pharmaceutical industry

The choice of a Contract Research Organisation (CRO–Sponsor partnership or CRO) in clinical development is fundamental for the medical department of a pharmaceutical company. A decision analysis tool can help in this choice. Multicriteria analysis (ELECTRE 1 and 2) has the capacity to integrate qualitative judgement criteria with weights in incorporating the concordance and discordance indexes. The objective of this study is to present the theory and one application in the selection of CROs. How can one CRO be selected from a group of nine pre-selections by using seven judgement criteria with different weights? The results in this paper are: with the ELECTRE 1 method six CROs were selected and only one CRO with the ELECTRE 2 method.