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.
A quality-adjusted life year combines time lived with preference-based health-state values so that one year at utility 1 represents one QALY, while periods in poorer health contribute proportionately less—or negatively where the applicable value set permits states valued below dead.
An oncology outcome measure, Q-TWiST, dividing survival into phases, such as toxicity, symptom-free time, and time after relapse, each weighted by quality of life.
A descriptive statistic dividing a ranked dataset into four equal-sized groups, marking the twenty-fifth, fiftieth, and seventy-fifth percentiles.
A mathematical model describing how entities wait in line for limited servers, used to analyse average waiting time and server utilisation.
A financial ratio calculated as current assets excluding inventory, divided by current liabilities, a more conservative liquidity measure than the current ratio.
In a mixed effects model, the components representing how individual units, such as patients, vary around an overall average relationship.
A meta-analysis model allowing genuine variation in the true treatment effect across studies, adding a between-study variance parameter to the estimate.
An approach combining evidence that explicitly allows for and estimates genuine variation in the true effect between studies, rather than assuming one common effect.
The computational process of producing a sequence of numbers approximating true randomness, used to sample parameter values in probabilistic health economic models.
A discrete choice model that lets preference parameters vary randomly across individuals according to a specified distribution, rather than assuming identical preferences.
The process of assigning trial participants to treatment groups by chance, producing groups comparable on both known and unknown influencing factors.
A dispersion measure calculated as the difference between the maximum and minimum values in a dataset, sensitive to extreme outliers.
The absolute difference between the incidence rates in two groups, giving a direct measure of the excess rate of disease from an exposure.
A measure comparing the incidence rates of an outcome between two groups, accounting for differences in person-time at risk.
The mathematical transformation converting a continuous-time hazard rate into the probability of an event occurring within a discrete time interval.
A measure of the proportion of patients readmitted to hospital within a defined period, commonly thirty days, after a prior discharge.
A component of a technology's value reflecting the benefit of extending life sufficiently to allow a patient to benefit from future medical advances.
A reference case is a documented set of preferred methodological choices that an institution asks analysts to follow so economic evaluations are transparent, consistent and comparable for a defined decision context.
Statistical techniques modelling the relationship between one or more predictor variables and an outcome variable, from simple linear to survival regression.
A time-to-event measure defined as the time from treatment completion until disease recurrence or death, used for curative-intent treatments.