Research Areas
Our research and consulting services promote an economically sustainable distribution of resources in the healthcare system. Our core activities: Promoting new forms of care, increasing transparency about the quality of care, health economic evaluation of technologies and processes.
Are you looking for ways to improve or better understand the health system through health economics? Are you seeking a research partnership for projects in health policy, health economics, or health services research? Our interdisciplinary team offers innovative and tailored solutions to meet your needs.
Efficiency of the Health Care System
The Swiss health system offers high-quality medical care and comprehensive health services. Life expectancy in Switzerland is among the highest in the developed world, and mortality rates for chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease are continuously decreasing. Nevertheless, Switzerland has some of the highest health care expenditures worldwide. While medical advancements have greatly improved patient outcomes, inefficiencies and perverse incentives continue to contribute to higher costs.
Our research examines how incentive structures and information flow in the Swiss health care system affect medical decisions. Are patients receiving the “right” care, or are they subjected to unnecessary treatments? Are doctors following medical guidelines? Are health reforms achieving their intended effects and bringing patients closer to optimal care? To answer these questions, we draw upon our expertise in empirical methods to measure health care quality, health outcomes, and the appropriateness of care using routine data, such as billing records, SASIS data, and hospital and outpatient medical statistics.
Health Technology Assessment and Economic Evaluation
Each year approximately 20-50 new drug therapies are launched in Switzerland, and new models of care, such as Care and Hospital at Home and various telemedicine solutions, are being developed, tried and tested on a regular basis.
We analyze the costs and benefits of new health care technologies, as well as ways to reimburse and implement them. These include medicines, new models of care, integrated care, and digital care technologies. Our deep expertise in health technology assessment focuses on evaluating the clinical and economic impact of new medicines to support price negotiations.
Innovation and Technology in Health Care Systems
How can health care benefit from technological progress? Why are the latest technologies not always used? How can innovations be supported by medical and nursing staff?
We analyze the regulatory framework and its impact on innovation in the health care sector, focusing on the innovative actions of health care providers. We examine the conditions and factors influencing innovation, recognizing them as prerequisites for high-quality health care.
Individual Choices and Behavior
Understanding individual behavior is crucial for improving health outcomes and improving the efficiency of health care systems. Financial aspects and behavioral biases influence everyday decisions related to health behavior and the use of health care services. These decisions include the choice of insurance benefits, co-payment models, lifestyle choices and medical decisions.
We help you understand how individuals make decisions about their health and health care, from responses to medical and regulatory interventions to lifestyle choices. Our expertise includes evidence synthesis and recommendations, intervention design, survey planning and execution, and experiments to analyze individual behavior and intervention effects.
We use a wide range of methods from the fields of health economics, health econometrics, data science, and health technology assessment, including:
- Applied data science and econometrics
- Causal analysis and program evaluation
- Machine learning methods
- Data science techniques using secondary health care data
- Experiments, including discrete choice experiments, field experiments, lab experiments, and natural experiments
- Health economic evidence synthesis of new technology and health care settings
- Evaluation of costs and effects of technologies (based on secondary data): costing exercises and modelling
Research Areas
- Health Policy
- Health Economics
- Health Services Research
- Health Technology Assessment
- Applied Health Econometrics
- Health Care Data Science
- Innovation in Health Care
- Behavioral Economics of Health and Health Care
