QALY Utility-over-Time Explorer

Build two health profiles, see QALYs as area under each utility-over-time curve, and compare constant, stepwise and changing utility.

Interpretation safeguard: Equal QALY totals do not necessarily describe identical health experiences. QALYs inform economic evaluation; they do not independently determine funding, equity or affordability.

Settings

Utilities may range from −1 to 1. Death has utility 0. Living-state QALYs stop at the entered death time.

Utility over time

Utility over time for two optionsTwo directly labelled utility paths with shaded areas representing accumulated QALYs.
Option AOption B

Results

Auditable interval table

OptionIntervalYearsStart utilityEnd utilityUndiscounted QALYsDiscounted QALYs
Method, evidence and originality

Stepwise QALYs use utility × duration. Trapezoidal QALYs use ((start utility + end utility) ÷ 2) × duration. Discounting uses QALYs ÷ (1 + rate)time. The interface, visual design, code and synthetic example were created from a blank file for HealthEconomics.wiki.

Evidence basis: Weinstein, Torrance and McGuire, “QALYs: The Basics” (2009); NICE, Economic evaluation; Brazier et al., Measuring and Valuing Health Benefits for Economic Evaluation (2017).