What is a QALY? QALYs, DALYs and life years gained are all common outcome measures in economic evaluations of health interventions. DALY vs QALY DALY and QALY are both measurements used in order to calculate time (in terms of life years) of an individual or a general population. The concept of time, illnesses, diseases, and health treatments are major and recurring factors in both methods of measurement. Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) The DALY is an alternative tool which emerged in the early 90s, as a means of quantifying the burden of disease. An implicit assumption that underlies this approach is that all QALYs are of equal social value, irrespective of who accrues themâfamously quoted as âa QALY is a QALY is a QALYâ. A quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) takes into account both the quantity and quality of life generated by healthcare interventions. The DALY is primarily a measure of disease burden (disability weights measure loss of functioning) but its use in cost-effectiveness analysis is also relatively The QALY framework provided a basis for the development of a number of health outcome measures, including the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) in the early 1990s. QALYs use a scale of 0 â 1, with 0 representing death and 1 representing a year of life lived in perfect health. NICE has been using QALYs since it was founded. The disability-adjusted life year or DALY is a summary measure of public health widely used to quantify burden of disease. It is the arithmetic product of life expectancy and a measure of the quality of the remaining life-years. Among the QALY- and DALY-based ratios reported from the remaining seven studies, absolute differences ranged from approximately $2 to $15,000 per unit of benefit, and relative differences from 6â120 percent, but most differences were modest in comparison with the ratio value itself. QALYs assess the effect of a given treatment on how long a patient will live 2. QALY, commonly known as Quality Adjusted Life Years is a metric which measures the healthy years lived by an individual; QALY used as a measure ⦠A common factor between the two measurements is that [â¦] the Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY). The QALY is used in cost-utility analysis as the measure of health benefits of medical interventions and to compare the value of different medicines. A QALY is a cost-effectiveness methodology measuring the ability of a new therapy to extend life and improve the quality of life. costs, public and private health insurance providers have utilized the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) to determine the cost-effectiveness of medications and treatment. In this report, NCD QALYs place a lower value on treatments which extend the lives of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. For example, if a new treatment gave an additional 0.5 QALYs and the cost of the new treatment per patient is a5,000 then cost per QALY would be a10,000 (5,000/0.5). In the DALY philosophy, every person is born with a certain number of life years potentially lived in optimal health. While the latter is a pure measure of ⦠The QALY framework provided a basis for the development of a number of health outcome measures, including the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) in the early 1990s. A QALY places a weight on time in different health states. People may lose these healthy life years through living with illness and/or through dying before a