Bonsel G. Feasibility and reliability of the annual profile method for deriving QALYs for short-term health conditions. Med Decis Making 2008;28:500–10

Two basic goals of health care are to reduce mortal-ity rates and to reduce morbidity. Summary measures such as the quality-adjusted life year(QALY) and the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) combine information on these 2 attributes into a single index. The QALY and DALY are powerful measures to respectively assess the effectiveness of health care programs or interventions and to monitor population health. In addition to epidemiologic data on mortality and morbidity, health state values that numerically express disease severity are needed to calculate QALY or DALY outcomes. Health state values can be ob-tained either directly using tradeoff techniques (e.g., time tradeoff, standard gamble method) or indirectly through a generic preference-based health status mea-sure such as the EQ-5D or the Health Utilities Index. In the standard QALY model (SQM), which is mathematically similar to the DALY model, diseas