Quality of life and health economics: Where is the link?

Quality of Life (QOL) is an important economic benefit which we are willing to pay for. Economic evaluation is a method for finding out the best value for money in order to allocate resources. Since the traditional measures of QOL, using generic or specific instruments, are of limited use in economic evaluations, it is advisable to include a utility measure. From a research perspective we need to investigate the relationship between different descriptive instruments for QOL, utility score for different health states and willingness to pay for improvements in QOL.