Generic preference-based measures are often used for capturing patients’ health-related quality of life (QOL) to assess quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in health technology assessment (HTA). Whilst this type of measure, which includes commonly used EQ-5D instruments, are useful for enabling comparability between assessments, they might not always capture all the dimensions of QOL that are important to patients.

This interactive summary report provides three case studies exploring examples of health conditions where the EQ-5D has been shown to, or is likely to, perform sub-optimally in reflecting the dimensions of QOL that matter to patients:

  1. Multiple sclerosis
  2. Alzheimer’s disease
  3. Sickle cell disease

Our earlier report on the measurement of QOL for HTA provides a summary of the potential alternatives to generic preference-based measures for measuring QOL.