Dr Gaurav Jyani, a research scholar at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, has been awarded the first prize at the recently concluded 10th HTAsiaLink Conference in Thailand for presenting the paper on health-related quality of life among the Indian population. This research was also awarded the first prize at the recent National Conference of Epidemiology Foundation of India held at AIIMS Patna. This nationwide study led by Dr Shankar Prinja, professor of health economics at PGIMER, has been conducted across the states of Haryana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu, in collaboration with prominent institutes of the respective states. Though similar studies have been conducted in other countries on a smaller number of respondent interviews, the PGIMER study is the world’s largest study of its kind. Regarding the policy implications of the study, Professor Prinja said the findings are of significant use in the design of health programmes and the provision of healthcare in hospitals. The findings are also being used in Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) to measure the outcomes in the treatment of patients. This information, Prof. Prinja said, was very useful in assessing the quality of healthcare services provided by the hospitals to the AB-PMJAY beneficiaries. The Central Government has recently released the policy on value-based care and has endorsed the use of the findings of this study, which will be applied on a pilot basis to be done in hospitals across the five states, where the incentive payment to hospitals will be linked with the outcomes of patient treatment. The research has led to the development of a value-set (a database) for India, which contains information about the quality of life among Indians. The value-set has also been adopted by the Department of Health Research for use in its health technology assessment programme and is currently being used by different researchers across India. The HTAsiaLink Conference which concluded on December 2 is a prestigious event among healthcare professionals working in the field of public health. Eminent health economists, scientists, and policymakers from more than 35 countries attended the event, which was organised under the theme ‘Driving the post-Covid health system through evidence-informed decisions.’ The PGIMER delegation headed by Prof. Prinja has also organised a teaching session at the conference for the establishment of efficient health technology assessment systems in the countries. This session was organised in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva.
