Rosalind Rabin, Frank de Charro, Agota Szende 1.1 Purpose of this booklet Governments and healthcare funders worldwide are making increasing use of economic evaluation to inform priority setting in health care. For various reasons, cost benefit analysis is usually rejected in favour of cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analyses, often involving the estimation of the incremental cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) gained (Drummond et al, 2005). The estimation of QALYs gained requires valuations for all relevant health states on a scale anchored at 1 = Full health and 0 = Dead. The EQ-5D is widely used in this context and a number of value sets are available for all the health states generated by the EQ-5D descriptive system. These can be readily applied to health outcomes measured as EQ-5D profiles. EQ-5D has become one of the valuation approaches recommended by several reimbursement authorities and academic bodies in European countries (e.g. The Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, UK), North America (e.g. Canada), and elsewhere (e.g. New Zealand). The EuroQol Group frequently receives requests for advice regarding EQ-5D valuation data. Those seeking to apply EQ-5D valuations in economic evaluation want to know about the availability of EQ-5D value sets and how they can obtain them. They also seek specific guidance about which of the available value sets they should use for their purposes.

A must-read for those interested in the valuation of self-reported health Provides an essential guide to one of the most widely validated and internationally applied value-based questionnaires, the EuroQol Group's EQ-5D health questionnaire The inventory of value sets compiled in this book brings together, for the first time, research results on people's valuation of health from a range of countries and continents Gives practical advice and answers for frequent questions for anyone working with EQ-5D data in clinical trials, public health research and assessments of value for money

Inhalt
Comparative review of Time Trade-Off value sets.- Comparative review of Visual Analogue Scale value sets.- Guidance to users of EQ-5D value sets.