Multicriteria decision making methods in engineering design: an application on medical devices

The design of medical devices is challenging, due to strict geometry specifications and criteria belonging to several disciplines. Hence, design methods should be fol-lowed in a multicriteria decision making scenario, in order to satisfy constraints and select most suitable alternatives. The aim of this paper is to provide a design methodology which seems to lack in the literature of design of biomedical devic-es. This work attempts to highlight the peculiarities in the design of biomedical de-vices and the relative solution generation for a novel device. In particular, the case study proposed in this paper concerns with the design of Bone-Biopsy (BB) needle devices. Bone biopsy is a diagnostic procedure that involves taking a sam-ple of bone tissue to be analyzed in the laboratory. Following the design process of Pahl and Beitz, a functional analysis is carried out, to point out the interfaces between parts of existing bone biopsy needles. The core part of the product is the needle cannula holder, connecting the handle with the needle. Starting from a functional analysis of the components, a morphology matrix is used to generate alternatives. The Pugh’s Controlled Convergence method is used to score and rank alternatives in relation to the decision makers’ opinions. In this work, the de-sign peculiarities related to the BB needles which have been pointed out could be extended for guiding the design of other biomedical devices.