The course focuses on two different types of measures, asking how they’re developed and calculated, and how they’re used by decision-makers in practice:
- Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): which are measures completed by the patients themselves, about their health, symptoms, functioning, wellbeing or satisfaction with treatment.
- Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs): which compare the benefits of different treatment options, based on the quality and quantity of life they yield.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...
- Discuss what health means and how to measure its impact on quality of life.
- Evaluate how to develop and use patient reported outcome measures including their limitations in decision-making.
- Calculate QALYs in simple examples to arrive at values which can be used to compare treatment benefits.
- Perform a time trade off to develop an understanding of how this method can be used to value health states and generate preference weights.
- Debate who should value our health. Should it be patients, health professionals or the general public and should this be different for children’s health?
- Compare where QALYs are used in healthcare decision-making worldwide and discuss the merits of this method compared to those used where you live.
Who is the course for?
This course will help you understand how and why choices about drugs and treatments have been made. It may inspire you to think about a career in healthcare, local decision making or academia.
The course is run by
- Clara Mukuria a Health Economist at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) whose interests are in measuring and valuing health related quality of life and well-being.
- Katherine Stevens a Health Economist working in ScHARR whose research interest is measuring and valuing children's health related quality of life.
Link for registration and further information: www.futurelearn.com/courses/valuing-health