Utilities for Joint Health States

Utility is a quantitative expression of an individual's preference for a particular state of health under the condition of uncertainty. Similarly, utilities for joint health states are the quantitative expression of an individual's preference for having two or more health states or comorbid disease conditions, for example, a person with both asthma and diabetes. Same as utilities for single health state, utilities for joint health states are assessed on a scale where 0 represents death and 1 represents perfect health.

One important usefulness of utility assessment arises from the ability to compute quality-adjusted survival, measured in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which has gained increasing attention from clinical investigators to evaluate the treatment outcomes for medical decision making. QALY is achieved by multiplying quantity by quality of ...

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