ECHOUTCOME (FP7)
Validation of the methodological robustness of the QALY indicator
This innovative project studied the robustness of the QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) outcome, currently used by several health technology assessment (HTA) authorities in the UK, Canada and Australia.
The consortium was led by Dr Ariel Beresniak from Data Mining International (Switzerland) and was composed of the University of Bocconi (Italy), the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), the French Society of Health Economics (SFES), Cyklad Group (France), Lyon Ingénierie Projets and the Claude Bernard University (France). Having studied the underlying theoretical assumptions of the QALY outcome, the project concluded that the QALY outcome is flawed, leads to inconsistent and divergent results and should be avoided for health decision making
European cost-effectiveness guidelines should be considered as a step forward towards establishing transparent HTA practices in Europe. Further research is needed to assess the feasibility, reliability and validity of more flexible, clinically meaningful and robust methodologies.
The European Guidelines for conducting Cost-Effectiveness analyses, presented at the final conference in Belgium.
Publication of ECHOUTCOME in Pharmacoecnomics 2015
validating the underlying assumptions of QALY
