MD in Measuring and Valuing Health

University of Sheffield

This programme of research is composed of various related projects funded from a range of sources including MRC, NIHR, pharmaceutical companies and charities. The last two decades have seen increasing use of economic evaluation to inform resource allocation in health care systems around the world (eg NICE). A core issue for economic evaluation is the way the benefits of health care are measured and valued. A widely used technique of economic evaluation in health care has been cost-effectiveness analysis using Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) to assess effectiveness in units that are comparable across health care interventions. Commonly used methods for putting the 'Q' into the QALY are generic preference-based measures of health, such as the EQ-5D, SF-6D, HUI2 and the HUI3. These generic measures have been adopted by agencies such as NICE to populate their models of the cost-effectiveness of interventions.