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What is a QALY?

April 26, 2017qaly

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What is a QALY?

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Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) are calculated by multiplying survival time by a ‘utility’ weight (in this specific case, a QALY weight), to adjust for the HRQoL experienced during that survival time. The QALY weight is anchored at zero (death) and one (full health). The QALY weight assigned is therefore a measure of the relative preference for a year of life in a given health state. Health states worse than death are possible, and these have a negative weight. This weighting system is underpinned by economic theory, and a number of assumptions, in order for the weight to reflect society’s willingness to trade-off between HRQoL and survival.1-3 Because the QALY weight represents an index of strength of preference for different HRQoL outcomes it provides a means of ranking health states in terms of desirability.