Policy Conference 2008

Involving the public in health care decisions: The use of discrete choice experiments

6th June 2008

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The Health Economics Research Unit (HERU) hosted another of its regular policy conferences on 6th June in Edinburgh. The purpose of the conference was to present recent policy driven research that used discrete choice experiments (DCEs) to involve the public in health care decisions.

Recently, greater patient and community involvement in health care decision-making has been advocated. DCEs are a method that can be used to elicit patient and community preferences, which estimate a quantifiable measure of value for use at the policy level and have been applied in a range of contexts. HERU is internationally recognised for its research into the development and application of DCEs in health.

Professor Mandy Ryan opened the conference with an introduction to the use of DCEs as a method of eliciting public preferences, and an overview of their application to health economic issues. Following this a number of presentations demonstrated the breadth of applications of DCEs to health care decision making.

1. Professor Christine Bond presented on the application of DCEs to elicit the public's preferences for alternative models of care in pharmacy. Prof Bond discussed studies that have applied DCEs to look at public preferences for the treatment of minor illnesses and the changing role of the pharmacist. Click here for presentation slides

2. Dr Andrew Carnon of NHS Dumfries and Galloway and Dr Verity Watson presented an overview of a project that incorporated the publics' preferences can be into NHS priority setting. NHS Dumfries and Galloway wanted to involve the public in a decision-making process that encompassed the principles set out in 'Delivering for Health'. In a joint project between NHS Dumfries and Galloway and HERU a DCE was used to elicited weights for a priority setting exercise from the general public in Dumfries and Galloway. Click here for presentation slides

3. Professor Cam Donaldson discussed the social value of a Quality Adjusted Life Year (SVQ) project. This explored whether the public want the characteristics of respondents to be considered when taking account of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) gained as a result of interventions. This is of importance because it is thought that not all QALYs are necessarily equal in the NICE appraisal process, raising the question of whether QALYs can be weighted according to the characteristics of health care beneficiaries. Click here for presentation slides

The conference delegation comprised of a wide range of professionals from the NHS in Scotland, the Scottish Government Health Directorates, academic institutions and other health care organisations.

If you would like to leave a comment or discuss any of the topics covered at this conference, please contact HERU at heru@abdn.ac.uk