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    Modular update to NICE manuals EQ-5D-5L value set: Evidence review document

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    3 Current approach in NICE manuals

    3.1

    The EQ-5D is NICE's preferred measure of health-related quality of life in adults, so that evaluations are consistent. We do not recommend specific measures of health-related quality of life in children and young people. NICE's guidelines manual and technology appraisal and highly specialised technologies guidance manual state that valuation studies for health-related quality of life instruments should be based on public preferences from a representative sample of the UK population using a choice-based method.

    3.2

    NICE's manuals support using either the EQ-5D-3L or the EQ-5D-5L descriptive system to collect health-related quality of life data in adults. But these dictate that 5L descriptive system data should be mapped onto the 3L value set to calculate utility values for reference-case analyses.

    3.3

    NICE does not recommend using the EQ‑5D‑5L value set for England published by Devlin et al. (2018a), because of concerns about the data and modelling approach raised during independent quality assurance by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Policy Research Unit for Economic methods of Evaluation in health and care interventions (EEPRU) (Hernández Alava et al. 2020). In a position statement on use of the EQ-5D-5L value set, NICE recommended doing a new valuation study, with stricter governance and quality assurance built in throughout. This study, reporting an EQ-5D-5L value set for the UK, has now been published (Rowen et al. 2026).