Testing assumptions of quality-adjusted life-year calculations Commentary on 'An Exponential Representation of Health State Utility' from M. Happich

摘要

The objective of this work was to test the validity of one assumption of the techniques used to calculate quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) values, using a real population survey. The most used method for determining QALYs from the utility values is an index calculation, which is a simple product of time (duration) and quality of life, i.e.: where ∑k_j=1 and the sum is taken over the whole range for j, between 1 and n. X is a vector of time and health state values.