Generating EQ-5D-5L Values in the UAE with TTO and DCE: Initial Results

As reported in this blog in November 2013, OHE’s Professor Nancy Devlin and Koonal Shah have been working on-site in Abu Dhabi to establish a new programme to measure and value health in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The project is being undertaken in collaboration with the United Arab Emirates University and Eli Lilly & Company, which is funding the project. The first results were presented at the 6th ISPOR Asia-Pacific Conference in September 2014 (see poster below).

In the Middle East, public preference data are gaining in importance as a basis for deciding about drug coverage. The first results of this joint project report on the feasibility of using time trade off (TTO) and discrete choice experiments (DCE) in the creation of EQ-5D-5L value sets for the UAE. Interviews of the general public generated a sample of 200 responses, although young and highly educated individuals were overrepresented.

These initial findings show that cultural beliefs complicated the collection of data for TTO, as the concept of ‘worse than dead’ (WTD) proved difficult to explain to some respondents. Differences between this survey and those in Western countries such as England included fewer health states being rated as WTD in the UAE and greater concern about mobility in the UAE than about anxiety/depression. However, the face validity of the TTO data appeared to be reasonably high, with higher values elicited for mild health states and lower values for severe health states. No problems were encountered with the use of DCE.

The authors conclude that meaningful health-state valuation data can be collected in the UAE, but that some adaptation of TTO methods may be necessary.

Papadimitropoulous, M., Elbarazi, I., Blair, I., Katsaiti, S., Shah, K. and Devlin, N., 2014. An investigation of the feasibility and cultural appropriateness of using time trade off (TTO) and discrete choice experiments (DCE) to generate EQ-5D-5L values in the United Arab Emirates. Poster presented at 6th ISPOR Asia-Pacific Conference. Beijing, China. 6-9 September 2014.