The study of health-related quality of life has consolidated the opinion of the scientific medical community regarding the relevance and prospects of a new paradigm in the development of health care. The possibility of obtaining alternative information about the state of patients during treatment and improving the methods of its analysis allowed to improve the quality of medical care and to learn how to manage the treatment process. The importance of quality of life in the medical context has a strong historical basis, but undeservedly ignored at the level of national health care systems for a long time. The purpose of the article is to study approaches to measuring the quality of life in medical practice according to scientific literature. The information from domestic and foreign literature sources was systematized and studied by using analytical and monographic methods. The recognition of the scientific direction on the quality of life as part of fundamental medicine occurred ambiguously and unevenly. The conclusions of ancient Greek philosophers, as well as Indian, Chinese and European healers were that a comprehensive study of the human being was necessary. Medieval physicians placed great importance on the causes of disease and evaluated human health according to the balance of environmental factors and the lifestyle of patients. The best practices and knowledge of Eastern and European doctors began to spread through the system of medical education and scientific exchange. The works of Russian scientists touching on the field of study of human life in the period of illness appeared. Scientific publications of American scientists devoted to the practical application of quality-of-life indicators in medicine, as well as the appearance of the term "health" proposed by the World Health Organization, allowed to raise the level of discussion of this issue in the medical community. The results of the work confirmed the high degree of relevance of the problem under study and its potential dominance in the development agenda of world health care. This is confirmed by the steady demand of society for a long and full life, as well as the search for new methods of management of the factors that can affect the effectiveness of the treatment process. The authors found that the scientific direction of the quality of life is actively developing as a full-fledged system of theoretical knowledge, and the positive dynamics of publications and discussions in this direction is forming a long-term trend of its practical application. Based on the studied literature sources, the authors came to a conclusion about the established unified approach to the definition of health-related quality of life as a psycho-emotional state of a person during and after treatment. Despite a significant increase in publications and active practical implementation of quality-of-life measurement tools into clinical practice, the issues of methodological and organizational support for the activities of medical organizations to improve patients' quality of life in the organization of medical care are not covered in the scientific literature.