Abstract: Healthy life expectancy is an important comprehensive indicators to measure the length and quality of life, and has been incorporated into the planning outline of “Healthy China 2030”initiative. However, the results of previous researches varied with different concept, health status evaluation indicators, data source types and measurement methods, which makes the current healthy life expectancy cannot reflect its real value. This paper systematically summarizes the key issues in the research of healthy life expectancy, and gives a detail discussion of the health status evaluation indicators, the data source types, measurement methods and influencing factors of healthy life expectancy to provide reference for the research of healthy life expectancy in China.