The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a measure of disease burden, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of a medical intervention. The QALY model requires utility independent, risk neutral, and constant proportional tradeoff behaviour.
The QALY is based on the number of years of life that would be added by the intervention. Each year in perfect health is assigned the value of 1.0 down to a value of 0.0 for being dead. If the extra years would not be lived in full health, for example if the patient would lose a limb, or be blind or have to use a wheelchair, then the extra life-years are given a value between 0 and 1 to account for this. Under certain methods, such as the EQ-5D, QALY can be negative number.
Read more about Quality-adjusted Life Year: Use, Meaning, Calculation, Weighting, Debate
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or year:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:25.26.
Jesus.
““That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)