A new tool for creating personal and social EQ-5D-5L value sets, including valuing ‘dead’

Abstract

A new online tool for creating personal and social EQ-5D-5L value sets was recently developed and trialled in New Zealand (NZ). Health state values for each participant are determined using the PAPRIKA method – in the present context, a novel type of adaptive discrete choice experiment – and any health states worse than dead are identified using a binary search algorithm. Following testing and refinement, the tool was distributed in an online survey to a representative sample of NZ adults (N=5112), whose personal value sets were created. Extensive data quality checks were performed, resulting in a ‘high-quality’ sub-sample of 2468 participants whose personal value sets were, in effect, averaged to create a social value set for NZ, as represented by social ‘disutility coefficients’ (consistent with the EQ-5D literature). These results overall and participants’ feedback indicate that the new valuation tool is feasible and acceptable to participants and enables valuation data to be relatively easily and cheaply collected. The tool could also be used in other countries, tested against other methods for creating EQ-5D-5L value sets, applied in personalised medicine and adapted to create value sets for other health descriptive systems.