OHE, Curtin and KCL have been awarded a research grant from the EuroQol Research Foundation to compare the EQ-5D-3L and EQ-5D-5L instruments in cancer patients.

OHE, in collaboration with Curtin University and King’s College London, has been awarded a research grant from the EuroQol Research Foundation to compare the sensitivity and responsiveness of the EQ-5D-3L and EQ-5D-5L instruments in a large cohort of cancer patients.

The existence of important dissimilarities between EQ-5D-3L and the newer EQ-5D-5L, in terms of both the health profiles and preference-based values, is a key topic in current research. As NICE has clearly stated in a recent document, “(…) further research is needed to explore the impact of adopting the EQ-5D-5L valuation set”. There is limited research that compares patient reported 3L and 5L profiles in the area of cancer, one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality globally, the treatments for which are often evaluated in HTA decisions.

The project will analyse data from Cancer 2015, a large-scale longitudinal genomic cancer cohort study in Victoria, Australia. Cancer 2015 enrols newly diagnosed, treatment naïve cancer patients, who are then asked to complete quality-of-life questionnaires at baseline, and at various follow-up points.

The richness and uniqueness of this dataset will be exploited to explore:

• The sensitivity of the 3L and 5L instruments to different patient and disease characteristics;
• If the 5L instrument systematically gives different responses and values compared to 3L, and what effect this has on QALYs;
• Which instrument is more responsive to changes in events and changes in quality of life.

The research team includes: Richard Norman (Curtin University) who was involved in developing 3L and 5L tariffs for Australia; Mark Pennington (King’s College London) who has experience analysing patient data from the UK DoH PROMs programme; Paula Lorgelly (OHE) who was a CI on the initial Cancer 2015 grant and has analysed the dataset previously to understand patient-reported outcomes; and Patricia Cubi-Mollá experienced in empirically analysing outcome measures.

This project will offer a unique understanding of the sensitivity and responsiveness of the EQ-5D-3L and 5L in a cohort of cancer patients.  It will use a variety of robust statistical analyses to control for potential confounding factors when comparing the responses of patients over time to the 3L instrument and the 5L instrument.  It will provide much needed evidence to support (or not) the wider promotion of the 5L to researchers, industry and HTA agencies.

For more information please contact Patricia Cubi-Molla at OHE.