Posted by Michael Wonder on 15 Feb 2021
Productivity-adjusted life years: a new metric for quantifying disease burden
15 February 2021 - For many years, disability-adjusted life-years have been a primary focus of the landmark Global Burden of Disease studies.
Incorporating years of life lost and years of life lived with disability, disability-adjusted life-years provide a useful mechanism for quantifying disease burden, for any health condition and in any given country. In economic evaluations, the quality-adjusted life-year provides a complementary method of estimating the potential benefit of health interventions in terms of both quantity and quality of life.
In many jurisdictions, quality-adjusted life-years are used to decide whether treatments can be considered worthwhile in relation to their costs, and form the basis of decisions about the allocation of scarce healthcare resources.
Ademi et al. propose a third measure of disease burden—the productivity-adjusted life-year.
