An Interval Neutrosophic Projection-Based VIKOR Method for Selecting Doctors

Mobile healthcare applications are emerging as an innovative and practical technology resource to provide automated and efficient medical services online. However, vagueness and uncertainty commonly exist during the process of selecting doctors online and few studies have addressed these problems. In this paper, we employed interval neutrosophic sets (INSs) to process evaluation information. We proposed and normalized an improved projection measurement for INSs to overcome the shortcomings in extant projection measurements. Additionally, we presented a projection-based difference measure combined with the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method to establish a projection-based VIKOR method. Moreover, we introduced transition functions to transform online evaluation information into INSs and employed the maximizing deviation method to obtain weights for criteria. It is a practical problem for patients to choose a suitable doctor on a mobile healthcare application. This problem can be solved by applying the proposed method. Finally, we verified the validity of the method by comparison with several existing methods, and then we conducted sensitivity analysis to demonstrate the method’s reliability. The doctor selection problem can be effectively solved by the projection-based VIKOR method for INSs. Our comparison indicates that the proposed method is more appropriate than other methods, and the final ranking results are more precise than the actual ranking list found online. INSs are effective in describing vagueness and uncertainty in multi-criteria decision-making problems. The method proposed in this paper was viable and valid for use in doctor selection processes with information expressed by INSs.