Based on the proceedings of the 1st Conference on Economic Evaluation of Health Care held at University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, May, 1999. This conference was attended by relevant speakers from different European countries. They discussed about some important issues related to the theory and practice of Economic Evaluation in Health Care: The Role of Economic Evaluation in Evaluating Health Care; The Valuation of Health and Safety for Public Sector Decision Making; The Role of Quality of Life Measurement in Economic Evaluation and in Clinical Practice; The Use of Quality of Life Instruments in Health Surveys; The Transferability of Results of Economic Evaluation Studies; Controversial costs in guidelines; Valuing Health Effects in Contingent Valuation Surveys, The Influence of Economic Evaluation in the Health Care Environment.