OHE Awarded DH Grant for EQ-5D Research

The OHE has won a £325,000 grant from the UK Department of Health that focuses on developing a new health status index – the 5 level EQ-5D –that will capture smaller changes in health related quality of life.

The OHE has been awarded a £325,000 Policy Research Programme grant by the Department of Health.  The fifteen-month project focuses on a new health status index – the 5 level (5L) EQ-5D — that will capture smaller changes in health related quality of life than does the current 3 level (3L) instrument.  The EQ-5D is arguably the most important patient-reported outcomes measure (PROM) currently in use.  In England, for example, it underpins technology appraisals submitted to NICE and is used by the PROMs programme to assess the quality of care provided in different settings.

The research for this grant consists of three sets of studies. The first will map the 5L to 3L values to produce an interim set of measures applicable while international research resolves important methodological issues with the 5L approach.  The EuroQol Group has similar research underway in Scotland, Poland and The Netherlands.  In England, 1,000 patients will be involved who have one of four diagnoses: rheumatoid arthritis, depression, multiple sclerosis or a recent history of myocardial infarction.

The second study will focus on improving Time Trade Off (TTO) methodology, focusing on Lead Time TTO (LT-TTO).  The objective is to develop a better understanding of the characteristics of the data generated by LT-TTO, improve data collection tools, and provide information for selecting the particular variant of LT-TTO to be used in subsequent research.  TTO helps translate EQ-5D indexes into values that can underpin health care allocation and access decisions. The third study builds on the second, with the aim of investigating alternatives for addressing  technical issues presented by the increase from 243 states under 3L to 3,125 under 5L.  Specifically, a hybrid approach using LT-TTO and discrete choice (DC) methods will be tested.  This study is part of a wider four-country study, involving the Netherlands, Italy and Canada.

The research programme will yield both an interim value set for the EQ-5D-5L, and methodological improvements in approaches to valuation that can be used to produce new national value sets for use in economic evaluation.

Investigators on the grant include: Prof Nancy Devlin, OHE; Dr Andrew Lloyd, Oxford Outcomes Ltd; Dr Aki Tsuchiya, University of Sheffield; Mr Koonal Shah, OHE.  Please contact Nancy Devlin for additional information.

Official project title: An interim EQ-5D-5L value set for England and development of EQ-5D-5L valuation methods.

Editor’s Note: OHE subsequently was awarded a second grant that puts into practice the results of this one. Click here for more information.