Trends and Issues

Abstract

It is tempting to start this concluding chapter with the observation that health status measurement is an idea whose time has come. This would be to do an injustice to the likes of Graunt, Petty, Farr, Nightingale and Codman, whose concerns with the measurement of health and the assessment of the outcomes of medical procedures span the centuries. It would also be misleading if the impression were to be given that medical and other health personnel have not hitherto been concerned in various ways with the outcomes of their efforts. Nor would one want to imply that health status measurement is the latest fad or fashion, destined to be discarded or ignored when the next fashion comes along. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the volume of work in health status and health-related quality of life measurement has expanded to such an extent in recent years that phrases such as ‘explosion of interest’ have been used to characterise developments in these areas. This explosion has not just been in evidence in the ‘professional’ literature: newspapers and magazines regularly contain references to such concepts as the QALY. Conferences on outcome measurement proceed apace, both for health status researchers and analysts, and for health service personnel who may be expected to become involved in such measurement.