Disability Weight
A value between zero and one representing the severity of health loss from a specific non-fatal condition, used to calculate years lived with disability.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Disability-Adjusted Life Year
A measure of disease burden combining years of life lost to premature death and years lived with disability, expressed as healthy years lost.
Discount Rate
The annual percentage applied to future costs or health outcomes to express them in present-value terms and permit consistent comparison across time.
Discounting Costs
The application of a discount rate to future costs within an economic evaluation, converting them into a common present-day value.
Discounting Health
The application of a discount rate to future health outcomes within an economic evaluation, converting them into a common present-day value.
Discrete Choice Experiment
A quantitative technique for eliciting preferences in which respondents choose among hypothetical alternatives defined by varying attributes and levels.
Discrete Event Model
A simulation model representing a system as a sequence of distinct events at specific times, with the system's state changing only at each event.
Discrete Event Simulation
A simulation technique tracking individual entities through a sequence of discrete events, with the clock advancing directly from one event to the next.
Discrete Model
A model in which time advances in fixed, distinct steps, such as one-year cycles, rather than flowing continuously.
Discriminant Validity
A form of construct validity shown when an instrument's scores do not correlate strongly with measures of theoretically distinct, unrelated concepts.
Disease Control Rate
A cancer outcome measure combining complete response, partial response, and stable disease rates, characterising the proportion whose disease did not progress.
Distribution Fitting
The statistical process of identifying which probability distribution and parameters best represent the observed variation or uncertainty in a model input.
Distribution-Based MID
An approach to estimating the minimal important difference from the statistical distribution of scores in a sample, such as a fraction of the standard deviation.
Distributional Cost-Effectiveness
An extension of cost-effectiveness analysis examining how an intervention's costs and health effects are distributed across population subgroups, such as by income.
Disutility
The reduction in utility from experiencing a health state worse than full health, expressed as a value below one on the utility scale.
Divergence
The failure of a numerical method or iterative process to approach the intended solution, often producing increasingly inaccurate results.
Dominance
A relationship between two interventions in which one is both less costly and more effective, making the other an inferior choice regardless of threshold.
Dominance Analysis
The systematic process of comparing interventions to identify which are dominated, strictly or through extended dominance, before calculating incremental cost-effectiveness ratios.
Dose Response
The relationship between the amount of a drug given and the magnitude of its resulting biological or clinical effect.
Dynamic Model
A model representing how a system's variables change over time in response to feedback and interaction among components, unlike a static model.