In Low-middle Income countries (LMIC) such as Morocco, operating with scarce resources under budget constraints, affordability remains a key concern to access innovative health technologies. Economic evaluations to inform decisions are limited in Morocco due to the lack of country-specific utility weights, necessary to derive appropriate QALYs. The EQ-5D-3L has been previously translated in local dialect. Our objective was to develop a value set for the EQ-5D-3L using preferences of the Moroccan general population for use in local economic assessments.

We used quota sampling based on age, sex, dwelling and literacy to recruit a representative sample of the general population. Composite time trade-off (cTTO) and discrete choice experiment (DCE) were used as the main elicitation techniques. A total of 28 EQ-5D-3L hypothetical health states grouped into three blocks were valued using cTTO. Additionally, 60 pairs of hypothetical health states, grouped into six blocks with 10 pairs in each were valued using DCE. Interviews were conducted using the EQ-PVT. To estimate the value set, we used a main-effects hybrid regression model of a random effects linear regression for c-TTO data, and a logistic regression and a conditional logistic regression for DCE data.

A total of 343 participants completed the interviews. The socio-demographic characteristics of this sample indicate representativeness of the Moroccan general population. Based on the hybrid model, the utility scoring algorithm for the EQ-5D-3L is: 1- mo2*0.055 - mo3*0.405 – sc2 *0.091 – sc3* 0.336 – ua2*0.068 – ua3*0.206 – pd2*0.059 -pd3*0.370 – ad2*0.076-ad3*0.256. Utility scores ranged from -0.5736 for the worst (33333) to 1.0 for the best (11111) EQ-5D-3L health state.

This is the first value set of EQ-5D-3L for Morocco and in Middle East North Africa region. These results promote and facilitate the use of health utility estimation in economic evaluations in Morocco and neighbouring countries.