HALYs and QALYs and DALYs, Oh My: Similarities and Differences in Summary Measures of Population Health
Highlights
- Utility can be understood as the value, or preference, that people have for health outcomes along a continuum anchored with death (0) and perfect health (1.0) (View Highlight)
- The original formulation of QALYs was drawn from the theoretical underpinnings of welfare economics and expected utility theory (View Highlight)
- Quality-adjusted life years are often seen as inexorably linked with utilitarianism (View Highlight)
- Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were developed to quantify the burden of disease and disability in populations, as well as to set priorities for resource allocation. (View Highlight)
- There are three general steps in calculating a HALY: (a) describing health, i.e., as a health state or as a disease/condition; (b) developing values or weights for the health state or condition, which are called HRQL weights here; and (c) combining values for different health states or conditions with estimates of life expectancy (View Highlight)
- In contrast to QALY methods, DALY architects chose to attach estimates of HRQL to specific diseases, rather than to health states (View Highlight)
- Disability states in DALYs do not take account of comorbid conditions (View Highlight)
- A therapy that creates unwanted side effects cannot be captured within the DALY framework (View Highlight)