Quality-adjusted life year (QALY)
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Years of life weighted by health-related quality u between 0 (dead) and 1 (full health).
LaTeX: QALY = \sum_{t} u_t\, \Delta t
Variables and notation#
u_t is a health-state utility weight and Delta t time spent in that state in years; QALY sums utility-weighted time.
Worked example#
Two years at utility 0.8 and one at 0.5 yield 2×0.8+1×0.5=2.1 QALYs.
Related methods and when to use them#
QALY combines survival and health-related quality; life-years count time alone. Utility instruments, perspective and discounting choices must be specified; some valuation systems allow states below zero.
Sources and further reading#
Key findings#
- Quality-adjusted life year (QALY) was mentioned in 27 papers in the last 30 days (2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05), ranking #56 of the 248 equations and models mentioned.
- By journal category: Health Economics and Policy (27).
- Most of them appeared in PharmacoEconomics - Open (6), Applied Health Economics and Health Policy (4) and PharmacoEconomics (4).
- Often mentioned together with Incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) (17), Disability-adjusted life year (DALY) (3) and Decision tree (CART) (2).
- Datasets named in the same papers: Global Burden of Disease (4), WITS / TRAINS tariff data (2) and China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) (1).
- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 676 archived papers mentioned Quality-adjusted life year (QALY) in their title, abstract, keywords or full text, most of them in Oct 2026 (30).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), Quality-adjusted life year (QALY) was mentioned in 1,452 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,407), economics (16) and statistics (16).
- 214 of them were published in 2025, against 93 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Sheffield (40), Monash University (34) and University of York (34).
- The journals publishing most of them were PharmacoEconomics (160), Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation (145) and PharmacoEconomics - Open (125).
- The most-cited of them is “Perspective and Costing in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, 1974–2018” (PharmacoEconomics, 2020), with 279 citations.
Mentions over 36 months#
| Trend | Nov 23–Oct 24 | Nov 24–Oct 25 | Nov 25–Oct 26 | 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 219 | 197 | 260 | 676 |
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health Economics and Policy | 90 | 100 | 108 | 102 | 129 | 123 | 140 | 207 | 203 | 205 |
| Economics | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 4 |
| Statistics | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Operations Research | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| AI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Management | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Higher Education and Research | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 93 | 102 | 109 | 107 | 134 | 126 | 141 | 215 | 214 | 211 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | PharmacoEconomics | 160 |
| 2 | Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation | 145 |
| 3 | PharmacoEconomics - Open | 125 |
| 4 | Applied Health Economics and Health Policy | 85 |
| 5 | The European Journal of Health Economics | 82 |
| 6 | Health Economics Review | 65 |
| 7 | Health and Quality of Life Outcomes | 38 |
| 8 | Social Science & Medicine | 16 |
| 9 | Health Policy and Technology | 8 |
| 10 | Journal of Health Economics | 5 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Sheffield | 40 |
| 2 | Monash University | 34 |
| 3 | University of York | 34 |
| 4 | University of Oxford | 33 |
| 5 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | 29 |
| 6 | The University of Melbourne | 28 |
| 7 | University of Technology Sydney | 21 |
| 8 | National University of Singapore | 20 |
| 9 | University of Groningen | 19 |
| 10 | University College London | 17 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United Kingdom | 226 |
| 2 | United States | 153 |
| 3 | Australia | 101 |
| 4 | Netherlands | 93 |
| 5 | China | 86 |
| 6 | Canada | 62 |
| 7 | Germany | 46 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 45 |
| 9 | Spain | 45 |
| 10 | Sweden | 33 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | quality-adjusted life years | 524 |
| 2 | cost-effectiveness | 473 |
| 3 | Markov model | 111 |
| 4 | incremental cost-effectiveness ratio | 107 |
| 5 | health technology assessment | 93 |
| 6 | health-related quality of life | 92 |
| 7 | cost-utility analysis | 84 |
| 8 | health care costs | 68 |
| 9 | willingness-to-pay threshold | 64 |
| 10 | economic evaluation | 42 |
Most-cited papers#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Quality-adjusted life year (QALY). Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/equations/quality-adjusted-life-year-qaly
@misc{scholar4ai-equations-quality-adjusted-life-year-qaly,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Quality-adjusted life year (QALY)},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/equations/quality-adjusted-life-year-qaly}},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}