Utility Study Design
As the use of economic evaluation for pharmaceutical market access decision-making increases, Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and utility assessments are being used as a key outcome measure within these evaluations. The calculation of QALYs is a central part of the reference case for economic evaluations of pharmaceuticals submitted to UK HTA bodies such as NICE and SMC.
There are a number of valuation methods which are frequently used in direct measurement studies that we can use for your utility study. These include:
Standard Gamble (SG)
Time trade-off (TTO)
Rating Scale (Visual Analogue Scale (VAS))
Vignette/Scenario Studies
EQ-5D
SF-36 (Short Form 36)
HUI (Health Utilities Index)
Utilities can also be measured using the method of mapping the descriptions from a disease-specific QoL instrument onto the utility algorithm of a generic instrument.
At Tolley Health Economics, we can perform mapping/cross-walk utility studies with an empirical database containing bot the HRQoL instrument and a generic instrument such as the EQ-5D to generate a mapping function.