Published Jan 17, 2013

Sheffield, UK - Decision-making agencies, such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK, recommend the inclusion of utility data in health technology assessments, and sometimes require data to be collected using specific patient-reported outcome measures such as the EQ-5D. This creates a problem if those specific measures have not been included within the clinical research programme. 'Mapping' is an analytical technique that can be used to predict EQ-5D or other utility data when they have not been collected directly as part of the planned clinical research programme and can facilitate the calculation of quality adjusted life years. It does this by estimating an empirical relationship between the utility measure and other clinical or quality of life data from a secondary source. In the paper, “Mapping to obtain EQ-5D utility values for use in NICE health technology assessments,” published in Value in Health, Dr. Louise Longworth, (PhD, MSc, BA Hons), Reader in Health Economics at Brunel University, UK, and Dr. Donna Rowen from the University of Sheffield, UK, present an overview of how to conduct 'mapping' in order to estimate health-related utility. They provide details on how mapping has been used by other researchers based on a review of the published literature, and how it has been used by the health-care decision-making body, NICE, in the UK. They outline best current practice and highlight where further research is required. Dr. Longworth states, "Mapping is a useful method for capturing utility data within health technology assessments (HTA), but the standards of analysis and reporting have too often been poor when presented to decision-makers in submissions. We hope that this paper will offer practical advice to analysts wishing to conduct and present their own mapping analyses in HTA submissions"

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