Development of Population Tariffs for the CarerQol Instrument for Hungary, Poland and Slovenia

__Background:__ The CarerQol instrument can be used in economic evaluations to measure the care-related quality of life of informal caregivers. Tariff sets are available for Australia, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. __Objective:__ Our objective was to develop tariff sets for the CarerQol instrument for Hungary, Poland and Slovenia and to compare these with the existing value sets. __Methods:__ Discrete-choice experiments were carried out in Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Data were collected through an online survey between November 2018 and January 2019, using representative samples of 1000 respondents per country. Tariffs were calculated from coefficient estimates from panel mixed multinomial logit models with random parameters. __Results:__ All seven CarerQol domains contributed significantly to the utility associated with different caregiving situations. Attributes valued highest were ‘physical health

State of the art in adoption of contact tracing apps and recommendations regarding privacy protection and public health: systematic review

Background: During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing mobile applications have received a lot of public attention. The ongoing debate highlights the challenges with the adoption of data-driven innovation: how to ensure an appropriate level of protection of individual data and maximize public health benefits derivable from the collected data. Objective: The aim of the study was to analyse available COVID-19 contact tracing applications and verify to what extent public health interests and data privacy standards can be fulfilled simultaneously in the process of the adoption of digital health technologies. Methods: A systematic review of Pubmed, Medbase, and grey literature was performed to identify available contact tracing applications. Two checklists were developed to evaluate (1) the compliance with the data privacy standards (2) fulfillment of public health interests. Based on both checklists, a scorecard with a selected set of minimum requirements was established as well. It was to estimate whether the balance between the objective of data privacy and public health interests can be achieved to ensure the broad adaptation of digital technologies. Results: Overall, 21 contact tracing applications were reviewed. In total, 11 criteria were defined to assess the usefulness of each digital technology for public health interests. The most frequently installed features related to the contact alerting and governmental accountability. The least frequent was the availability of the system of medical or organizational support. Only one app provided the threshold for the population coverage needed for the digital solution to be effective. In total, 12 criteria were used to assess the compliance of contact tracing application with data privacy regulations. The explicit user consent, voluntary basis, and the adoption of anonymization techniques were among most frequently fulffiled criteria. The information regarding the personal data breach and data gathered from children was mostly lacking. The balance between standards of data protection and public health benefits were achieved most and least with COVIDSafe, and Alipay Health Code respectively. Conclusions: The contact tracing application with a high level of compliance with standards of data privacy tend to fulfill public health interests to a limited extend. Simultaneously, the digital technologies with a lower level of data privacy protection used to allow for more data collection. Overall the review indicated that consistent number of applications appeared to be compliant with the standards of data privacy, while their usefulness from the public health perspective can still be maximized

Acceptable health and ageing: comparisons between Hungary and The Netherlands

Background: We aimed to investigate the acceptability of imperfect health states in relation to age in Hungary and analyse its determinants. Results are contrasted to age-matched actual population health scores and to fndings from a previous study in The Netherlands. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was performed. The same survey questions were applied as in a previous study in The Netherlands in order to enable inter-country comparisons. The descriptive system of the EQ-5D-3L health status questionnaire was used to assess the acceptability of moderate and severe health problems at ages from 30 to 80 by 10-year age-groups. Descriptive statistics were performed and linear regression analysis was used to investigate the determinants of acceptability. Results: Altogether 9281 (female 32.8%) were involved with mean age 36.0 years and EQ-5D-3L index score of 0.852 (SD 0.177). Acceptability of health problems increased with age, difered per health domain and with severity of the problems. Except for ‘Self-care’, moderate health problems were acceptable by the majority from age 70 and acceptability scores were lower than EQ-5D-3L population norms from that age. The lowest average acceptability age was found in the ‘Anxiety/depression’ and dimension the highest in the ‘Self-care’ dimension. Respondents’ age, current health, and lifestyle were signifcant determinants (R2 : 0.041–0.130). With a few minor exceptions in some health dimensions, acceptability levels and patterns were st