Revising value sets for health economic evaluation: exploring the criteria required to justify updating population value sets using the ICECAP-A capability wellbeing measure as a case study

About the Project

Health economic evaluations have become an important tool to guide the cost-effectiveness of health and care resource allocation decision making in the 21st century. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England, who are considered international leaders in regulatory health economic evaluations of new health care interventions, currently recommend the use of a general population value set developed from data collected over 30 years ago to generate Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) when using the EQ-5D (1). Accounting for population values shifting across the life-course (2), such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (3), alongside the continuous development of valuation methods (4) suggests updates to such value sets may be required on a more regular basis.

Aims

The project aims to explore the criteria required to justify updating population value sets used in health economic evaluation. This will be achieved across four work packages that aim to:

1. Develop an understanding on the current evidence in this area
2. Investigate what experts think should be the criteria to justify the need for updated value sets
3. Undertake valuation analysis of UK ICECAP-A (5) data
4. Analyse international ICECAP-A data

Methods

1. Systematically review the literature on possible criteria that could be used to justify the necessity to update a value set
2. Conduct qualitative research and a Delphi exercise with professionals involved in the development, analysis and use of value sets in health and care decision making
3. Using UK data collected as part of a Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) funded project (https://wun.ac.uk/wun/research/view/capability-wellbeing-and-covid-19-mitchell/) to undertake valuation analysis including scale adjusted latent class analysis using data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic and compare results to the original ICECAP-A value set collected in the UK in 2010 (6)
4. Using international data from the WUN study, to undertake quantitative analysis (eg factor/latent class analysis) to identify different subgroups in the general population based on their changes in capability wellbeing from pre-COVID-19 to post COVID-19. The impact of applying different value sets will be tested.

Supervisors:

• Dr Paul Mitchell and Professor Joanna Coast

Co-Supervisors:

• Professor Mickaël Hiligsmann, Maastricht University, the Netherlands
• Dr Samantha Husbands, University of Bristol
• Professor Rachael Morton, The University of Sydney, Australia

Keywords

Health economics, valuation methods, capability wellbeing

University of Bristol, Bristol Medical School

Bristol Medical School is the largest and one of the most diverse Schools in the University of Bristol, with approximately 1100 members of staff, 1350 undergraduate, 250 postgraduate taught and 300 postgraduate doctoral research students. The Head of School is Professor Chrissie Thirlwell. The Medical School has two departments: Population Health Sciences and Translational Health Sciences. The School is a leading centre for research and teaching across these areas. Research in the School is collaborative and multi-disciplinary, with staff coming from a wide range of academic disciplines and clinical specialties.

How to apply for this project

This project will be based in Bristol Medical School – Population Health Sciences in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Bristol. It could be adapted for any type of PGR degree. Use this information to search for the relevant programme in our online application system. Applicants should include the names of two supervisors (with their agreement after discussion of the research proposal). This project does not come with funding. If you have secured your own sponsorship or can self-fund this PGR degree please visit our information page here for further information on the department of Translational Health Science and how to apply.