Abstract

The EuroQol Group first met in 1987 to test the feasibility of jointly developing a standardised non-disease-specific instrument for describing and valuing health-related quality of life. From the outset the Group has been multi-country, multi-centre, and multi-disciplinary. The EuroQol instrument is intended to complement other forms of quality of life measures, and it has been purposefully developed to generate a cardinal index of health, thus giving it considerable potential for use in economic evaluation. Considerable effort has been invested by the Group in the development and valuation aspects of health status measurement. Earlier work was reported upon in 1990; this paper is a second 'corporate' effort detailing subsequent developments. The concepts underlying the EuroQol framework are explored with particular reference to the generic nature of the instrument. The valuation task is reviewed and some evidence on the methodological requirements for measurement is presented. A number of special issues of considerable interest and concern to the Group are discussed: the modelling of data, the duration of health states and the problems surrounding the state 'dead'. An outline of some of the applications of the EuroQol instrument is presented and a brief commentary on the Group's ongoing programme of work concludes the paper.

Keywords

Valuation (finance)Quality of life (healthcare)Actuarial scienceQuality-adjusted life yearMedicineHealth related quality of lifePsychologyDiseaseEconomicsRisk analysis (engineering)Cost effectivenessNursingAccounting

MeSH Terms

Cost-Benefit AnalysisDeathEuropeHealth Services ResearchHealth StatusHumansModelsTheoreticalObserver VariationQuality-Adjusted Life YearsReproducibility of ResultsValue of Life

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

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Publication Info

Year
1996
Type
review
Volume
37
Issue
1
Pages
53-72
Citations
5808
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Richard Brooks (1996). EuroQol: the current state of play. Health Policy , 37 (1) , 53-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-8510(96)00822-6

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/0168-8510(96)00822-6
PMID
10158943

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%