OBJECTIVES: The Online elicitation of Personal Utility Functions (OPUF) tool is a newly developed online survey for valuing health related quality of life instruments (e.g. EQ-5D-5L) applying compositional elicitation method and allowing value set estimation on the individual level. To date, the survey has only been available in English. Our objective was to translate OPUF into Hungarian and pilot its use in valuing EQ-5D-5L.

METHODS: A forward translation was undertaken; two health economic experts reviewed and compared translation with original English version. A non-probabilistic convenience sample of the Hungarian general population were surveyed online. The OPUF tool was built using modern JavaScript frameworks (Vue.js, Node.js) by one of the authors (PS). To construct a Personal Utility Function (PUF), dimension specific level ratings were combined with dimension weights and anchored on to the QALY scale. PUFs were truncated at -1.0 and infinite values were excluded.

RESULTS: Altogether, 91 survey (completed=98, excluded=7) were analyzed. There were 46 (50.5%) females in the sample, half of the respondents (50.5%) were young (age 18-19) and majority of respondents (81%) had a degree, mean (SD) EQ-5D-5L index was 0.94 (0.06). Comparing mean PUF values for single dimension level 5 problems, SC was ranked as the most while AD the least important, rank ordering differed from the Hungarian value set (HVS) (SC>MO>PD>UA>AD [PUF] vs MO>PD>SC>AD>UA [HVS]). Altogether 62 (63%) participants preferred being dead over the worst state. PUFs varied considerably between respondents, the mean utility of the worst health state was -0.179, higher (less negative) than HVS (-0.848).

CONCLUSIONS: This study successfully piloted a Hungarian OPUF survey and derived personal and social values set for the EQ-5D-5L. The relative importance of dimensions was different and the scale length shorter, than the Hungarian value set.