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Room: Main Hall
Time: Sat 10:15 AM-11:30 AM

EuroVaQ (European Value of a QALY)

Chair: Toni Ashton

Session Description

A major issue in health economic evaluation is that of the value to place on a quality adjusted life year (QALY), commonly used as a measure of health care effectiveness across Europe. This has come to the fore in several European countries, resulting from the creation of national health technology and pharmaceutical assessment agencies. Such agencies were established to make recommendations on technology adoption, addressing issues of affordability and sustainability of publicly-funded health care systems. Recommendations are most often made on the basis of QALYs produced relative to costs incurred. Methods of estimating cost per QALY, based on rigorous decision analytic models, are now very sophisticated. However, ‘threshold’ values adopted (such as £20-40,000 per QALY above or below which a new therapy will be rejected or recommended for adoption in England) are essentially arbitrary, with little or no economic foundation. This critical policy issue is reflected in the growing interest across Europe in development of more sound methods to elicit such a value.

EuroVaQ has been funded by the European Commission from 2007-2010. It is a collaboration of 28 researchers from 10 European countries, the main aim being to develop more robust methods to determine the monetary value of a QALY based on surveys of the general public.

The case for a European-level research initiative to address this issue was based on both subsidiarity and coherence. Different Member States will have different levels of affordability of QALY production. Country-specific values would lead to improved decision making and efficiency. But, it is crucial that WTP-based values generated have been rigorously tested across cultures using a consistent methodological approach.

In this session, we will present results from the main EuroVaQ surveys. Two methods of deriving a societal willingness-to-pay (WTP) based monetary value of a QALY have been tested. Therefore, as well as a project overview to begin, two presentations will follow, outlining methods and initial results from each WTP survey.

Session Organizer: Cam Donaldson (Newcastle University)

Presentations

1. A chained approach to estimating the value of a QALY across Europe

   Presenter: Angela Robinson (University of East Anglia)

2. The EuroVaQ design: an overview

   Presenter: Cam Donaldson (Glasgow Caledonian University)

3. Estimating a value of a QALY: how direct can we be?

   Presenter: Mark Pennington (Newcastle University)