A Method for Estimating the Total Loss of Healthy Life Years: Applications and Comparisons in UK and Scotland

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for estimating the total loss of healthy life years using stochastic process theory, applicable to UK, Scotland, and Sweden, aligning with WHO and EU estimates without survey data.

Contribution

It presents a new estimation approach based on first exit time theory that requires only death and population data, bypassing survey data and enabling comparison with WHO and EU methods.

Findings

Method aligns with WHO and EU estimates.

Applicable to UK, Scotland, and Sweden.

Provides estimators without survey data.

Abstract

We propose a method of estimating the Total Loss of Healthy Life Years based on the first exit time theory for a stochastic process, the resulting Health State Function and the Deterioration Function estimated as the curvature of the health state function. We have done many applications in UK and Scotland and Sweden supporting our theory. Furthermore it was proven that both the WHO and EU estimates of the healthy life expectancy can result from our method. The WHO system takes into account the severe and moderate causes in estimating the loss of healthy life years; instead the EU system calculates the total loss of healthy life years. For both cases our methodology provides both estimators from only death and population data. The advantages of our method are straightforward. We do not need survey data to make the calculations. The resulting estimates should be used to test and improve the existing survey based methodologies. While the WHO and EU systems tend to approach each other differences continue to appear based on the methodology of the related surveys and the analysis of data. Two main schools are working to these directions one based on USA the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) headed by Christopher J.L. Murray and contributors in all over the world and the European Health and Life Expectancy Information System (EHLEIS) with Jean-Marie Robine and a team from the EU member states. Keywords: Deterioration, Loss of healthy years, HALE, DALE, World Health Organization, WHO, European Union, EU, EHEMU, IHME, EHLEIS, Healthy life expectancy, Life expectancy.