Within the Efficient Medicine Collection, the Fundación Lilly presents the book "La medida de la salud. Guía de escalas de medición en español" by doctors Xavier Badia, Manel Salamero and Jordi Alonso

This publication is a compilation, update and analysis of the instruments currently available for measuring health, quality of life in practice and clinical research, as fundamental elements for the objective assessment of various health situations and decision making.

According to Dr. Xavier Badia, "the book provides sufficient information for an understanding of the basic principles of
 

measuring health and offers a detailed guide of the questionnaires used, translated and validated in Spain, so that doctors and health decision makers can select the instrument to use at any moment and for any field of application in the area of health".

This publication includes a great number of health-related quality of life measurement resources, categorised into generic and specific instruments. 28 are instruments which have recently become available for use in Spain, alongside the 61 which were included in the previous edition.

The last chapter focuses on the information resources for the measurement of health and the quality of life related to health which professional can find on the Internet (data bases, journals, organisations, etc).

Each of the scales found in the book has been revised in accordance with systematic guidelines for the extraction of information, which includes: the title, author and year of the first publication, purpose of the measuring instrument, conceptual basis, description of the scale, cultural adaptation process, validity, reliability and sensitivity to changes, modifications compared with the original instrument, reference standards, comments, recommendation level, addresses of the authors of the original scale or the authors of the Spanish adaptation, bibliography. The publication "La Medida de la Salud. Guía de escalas de medición en español" is a basic reference guide to find out which instruments are available in Spanish and the extent to which they are used, in order to be able to select and apply the most appropriate for the fields of research and clinical practice.