Quality-of-Life Utility Database

The Center for Value-Based Medicine® Quality-of-Life Utility Database© is a globally unique, standardized, health-related, quality-of-life information system created primarily through the efforts of more than 30 experienced physician researchers. Employing time tradeoff utility analysis as the measurement instrument to quantify the quality-of-life associated with specific diseases, the Database is comprised of values obtained from patients with those diseases.

For the first time, the Database presents a powerful tool that allows clinicians, researchers and other interested parties to perform standardized cost-utility (cost-effectiveness) analyses on the majority of interventions in healthcare. The conferred value and cost-utility of medical interventions, surgical interventions and pharmaceutical interventions can be objectively evaluated and compared on the same scale using common outcome measures. Such analyses comprise the foundation for Value-Based Medicine, the practice of medicine in which interventions are critically appraised according to the value (improvement in quality-of-life and/or length of life) they confer to patients, rather than on primary evidence based outcomes alone.

The Database was created specifically for use in healthcare cost-utility analyses, particularly pharmacoeconomic analyses. During its early development, the Database regularly underwent the process of continuous improvement known as Total Quality Management (TQM), in which there is a focus on user responsiveness, as well as the systematic identification and solving of problems by researchers involved in front-line data acquisition.

This emphasis on TQM has allowed Database information to be integrated with the majority of evidence-based clinical trials. Unlike other quality-of-life databases, the Quality-of-Life Utility Database© is applicable across all specialties in healthcare, uses patient preference-based data, and integrates the data with specific diseases and the severity of these diseases.

Patient Healthcare Services

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Quality-of-Life Utility DatabaseSM is an information system that numerically quantifies the quality-of-life associated with diseases across all specialties of medicine using time tradeoff utility analysis values obtained from patients.  A description of the “Database” is summarized below:

  1. It consists of 50,000+ standardized, utility point estimates obtained from over 5,000 patients and the peer-reviewed literature that can be used to quantify the patient-perceived value conferred by healthcare interventions.
  2. It can be used in cost-utility (cost-effectiveness) analyses to objectively evaluate and compare all pharmaceutical, medical and surgical interventions.
  3. When integrated with the best evidence-based data, the Quality-of-Life Utility Database© allows the practice of Value-Based Medicine®, a process that more accurately measures patient treatment benefits than evidence-based medicine alone.
  4. There is no known comparable database on the market globally.
  5. The “Database” was created with the intention of maximizing compatibility with evidence-based clinical trials, especially pharmaceutical trials.
  6. It is correlated with specific diseases (using ICD-10-CM codes) and the severity of these diseases.  Data demonstrate excellent construct validity when correlated with quality-of-life instruments used in general medicine, oncology, cardiology, pulmonology, neurology, rheumatology, ophthalmology and other specialties.
  7. The primary data statistically mirror an ethnic cross-section of the US population.
  8. The “Database” has been demonstrated in the peer-reviewed literature to have excellent reproducibility.
  9. It has been corroborated for construct validity across gender, age, ethnicity, educational levels, socioeconomic strata, and international borders in the peer-reviewed literature.
  10. It obviates the need to repeat prohibitively expensive clinical trials to obtain quality-of-life data.
  11. The data have been used in analyses to decide public policy and set healthcare standards for over 100 million people.
  12. The “Database” provides patient-based preferences that allow drug and healthcare service purchasers to perform value and cost-effectiveness analyses on the goods and services they purchase. They can thus more effectively and scientifically price their current and future payments for these goods.
  13. The utilities are correlated with other quality-of-life instruments, including the American College of Rheumatology Classification of Global Functional Status in Rheumatoid Arthritis, the American Heart Association Functional Capacity Classification, the Karnofsky Performance Status Scale, the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Scale and the Modified Rankin Scale among others.