Developing, testing and using condition specific preference-based measures of health – a useful addition to the armoury?

Abstract: Condition-specific utility instruments provide a means of estimating health state utility scores for patients with a specific health condition. A large number of condition-specific utility instruments have been developed and these vary widely in their construction and content. The utility scores they generate can then be used in economic evaluations of competing health care interventions although their comparability to evaluations using generic or other condition-specific measures has been questioned (for example due to concerns with the impact of focussing effects and co-morbidities). The talk will report on an MRC funded methods study conducting original primary research into the derivation of preference-based CSMs, the impact of naming disease in the health state descriptions, the potential role of add-on dimensions and evidence on the relative performance of CSMs compared to generic measures.  The talk will also examine the policy implications of using CSMs in economic evaluation to inform resource allocation.