ABSTRACT
The increasing interest in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) as an aid to health care decision making is a reflection of the growing awareness that health care choices frequently entail-either directly or indirectly-some trade-off between length of life and quality of life. This paper discusses the validity of QALY methodology as advocated for use in two separate contexts: where choices have to be made between different possible forms of treatment1 for the same individual; and in situations where a choice must be made between alternative ways of allocating limited resources among diverse health care activities.
