Mapping of Family Reported Outcome Measure (FROM-16) scores to EQ-5D: algorithm to calculate utility values

Area of Science:

• Health Economics
• Decision Science
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Health economic evaluations increasingly require patient and informal carer utility measures.
• Existing utility measures like EQ-5D are patient-focused, lacking direct comparable measures for family/carer perspectives.
• The Family Reported Outcome Measure (FROM-16) captures family impact but is not directly comparable to EQ-5D utility values.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a predictive model for EQ-5D-3L utility values based on FROM-16 scores.
• To enable the inclusion of family/informal carer utility in health economic evaluations when EQ-5D data is absent.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 4228 family members/partners in an online cross-sectional study.
• Employed split-half cross-validation with ten multinomial logistic regression models.
• Generated predictions using Monte Carlo simulation and compared them to observed EQ-5D-3L utility values.

Main Results:

• The developed model demonstrated high predictive accuracy and stability.
• Mean differences between predicted and observed utility estimates were small, ranging from 0.005 to 0.029.
• An average overall difference of 0.015 (2.2% overestimate) was observed, deemed not clinically significant.

Conclusions:

• An algorithm was successfully developed to derive EQ-5D utility estimates from FROM-16 scores.
• This tool facilitates the incorporation of family impact into health economic evaluations.
• Enables broader inclusion of informal carer perspectives in assessing medical interventions.