Patent Document ID: 8155993
Application ID: 10868739
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. Apparatus for assisting in the assessment of a pharmaceutical product, comprising: a memory, the memory having stored thereon: a plurality of attribute descriptors relating to attributes of the product to be assessed; a plurality of attribute weights; a plurality of dimension weights; and a plurality of attribute scores, each of said attribute scores representing a respective result of a comparison between said pharmaceutical product and a comparator product in terms of the associated attribute; and a central processing unit linked to the memory, the central processing unit configured to: provide an input interface to accept: a comparative product descriptor; said attribute descriptors, attribute weights, dimension weights, and attribute scores; an allocation of each attribute into one of a plurality of dimensions, each attribute weight defining a relative weight of the associated attribute within the dimension to which that attribute is allocated; and an allocation of each dimension into one of a plurality of dimension groups, each dimension weight defining a relative weight of the associated dimension within the dimension group to which that dimension is allocated; calculate: a weighted score for each of said attributes; a plurality of total attribute dimension scores by calculating the sum of the weighted scores for each of said attributes in each of the plurality of attribute dimensions; a plurality of total dimension scores by calculating the sum of the product of the plurality of total attribute dimension scores weighted by dimension group weight for each of said dimension groups; provide an assessment element adapted to derive one or more assessment measures from said scores; and provide an output interface adapted to display said one or more assessment measures.