Economic advice, method- and data-based

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a degenerative muscle disease that is inherited via the X-chromosome. The gradual degeneration of the muscles leads to complete paralysis of the extremities and thus to the loss of the ability to walk, to a high level of care dependency and finally to a premature death. There are no licensed therapies in Austria at present that can stop the degenerative progress of the disease. What are the social costs of DMD in Austria? For the first time, we deter-mined the direct, indirect and intangible costs for each of the four stages of the disease. Wherever possible, we referred to Austrian information on prices and quantities and alternatively used information from international literature or expert estimates. The social costs of DMD totalled EUR 30 million in 2023, which corre-sponds to EUR 131,000 per patient. Of this amount, 78% (EUR 23.5 mil-lion) were indirect costs arising from productivity losses among patients and their relatives (informal caregiving) and from premature death. The indirect costs were significantly higher than the direct costs in all four stages of the disease. The majority of the social costs (48%) were incurred during the last stages of the disease in which the patients have already lost their ability to walk. At last, we estimated the lifetime costs of one patient with an average disease progression to be EUR 4.7 million, accompanied by a loss of ap-proximately 60 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

The market development of hydrogen is currently sluggish. In the international H2 ramp-up, there is a clear gap between announced targets and actual realisation. This is not least because production costs are higher than previously assumed. Our adjusted HySuiX parameters reflect these developments. Switzerland's national hydrogen strategy dispenses with targets and relies on decentralized responsibility and regional H₂ hubs. The industry is calling for additional planning security and faster approval procedures. The federal government's review of the connection to the EU hydrogen backbone is welcomed, as this is considered to be central. There is reason to hope for a generous interpretation of P&D plants that can reclaim electricity grid fees. The EU has introduced the Union database for PoS guarantees, which is changing the guarantee of origin market. In Switzerland, there is a new national HKN register, and talks are currently being held on recognizing virtually imported biomethane. In Switzerland, the Network Transformation Plan for Renewable Gases (NeG) initiative has also been launched - modelled on the German H2vorOrt initiative. The strategies for renewable gases in our neighboring countries are different: France has ambitious expansion targets for biomethane and rapidly increasing feed-in volumes. Germany, on the other hand, is focusing more on hydrogen in the long term and has no expansion target for biomethane. Switzerland has no expansion targets for renewable gases. However, biomethane feed-in will be subsidized by the federal government for the first time from this year, only to be possibly cut back again towards 2027 as a result of the austerity program.

Based on our analysis, we identified hospitals within the group of central hospitals (K112) that differ in their patient and service structure from the other central hospitals and therefore incur additional costs due to performance-related factors, using only a few variables. The analysis process was carried out in two steps: First, variables that could define a hospital with comprehensive care function were selected based on expert input. Subsequently, the available variables were analysed using data-driven methods.