Evaluating the risk of healthcare failure modes using interval 2-tuple hybrid weighted distance measure

• This study proposes a new risk priority model to improve the traditional FMEA.
• Diversified assessments of experts are handled by interval 2-tuple linguistic variables.
• Interval 2-tuple hybrid weighted distance measure is used for ranking failure modes.
• Both subjective and objective weights of risk factors are considered in FMEA.
• The advantages of the new model are illustrated with a case of blood transfusion.

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), as a usefulness and powerful risk assessment tool, has been widely utilized in different industries for improving the safety and reliability of systems. However, the conventional risk priority number (RPN) method shows some important weaknesses when applied in actual situations. Moreover, FMEA is a group decision behavior and FMEA team members tend to use different linguistic term sets to express their judgments because of their different backgrounds and preferences, some of which may be imprecise, uncertain and incomplete. In this paper, we propose a new risk priority model using interval 2-tuple hybrid weighted distance (ITHWD) measure to solve the problems and improve the performance of the traditional FMEA. The new model can not only handle the uncertainty and diversity of FMEA team members’ assessment information but also consider the subjective and objective weights of risk factors in the risk ranking process. The model has exact characteristic and can avoid information distortion and loss in the linguistic information processing. Finally, a case study of blood transfusion is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and benefits of the proposed approach.