Validation of the PECUNIA reference unit costs templates in Spain: a useful tool for multi-national economic evaluations of health technologies.

Background: The PECUNIA Project was funded by the H2020 programme in which 10 partners from six countries participated. The aim was to develop standardized, harmonized and validated methods and tools to calculate costs in different sectors (such as health and social care, education among others), with the purpose of facilitating comparability of economic evaluations of health technologies across European countries. In this paper we report the first validation of the developed reference unit cost templates in Spain.

Adequate bowel preparation of patients undergoing screening colonoscopy : Does educational status matter? A retrospective data analysis.

Background: In order to achieve a high-quality screening colonoscopy, a high-quality bowel preparation is essential. To perform an adequate bowel cleansing patients need to understand and act on medical information, also known as health literacy. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the patients' educational status as a proxy for health literacy and adequate bowel preparation.

Aging Well? Exploring Self-Reported Quality of Life in the Older Austrian Population Based on Repeated Cross-Sectional Data.

Increase in life expectancy around the world puts aging societies with all their challenges on the Global Public Health agenda. In Austria, additional years of life gained are not spent in good health, as healthy life expectancy is far below the European average. Using repeated cross-sectional data from three waves of the Austrian Health Interview Survey (2006, 2014 and 2019), including a total of 10,056 participants aged 65 years and above, this study examined the change in self-reported quality-of-life (QoL) over time and explored associated factors.

Barriers and facilitators of healthcare access for long COVID-19 patients in a universal healthcare system: qualitative evidence from Austria.

Background: Long COVID-19 challenges health and social systems globally. International research finds major inequalities in prevalence and healthcare utilization as patients describe difficulties with accessing health care. In order to improve long-term outcomes it is vital to understand any underlying access barriers, for which relevant evidence on long COVID-19 is thus far lacking in a universal healthcare system like Austria.

The Development of a New Approach for the Harmonized Multi-Sectoral and Multi-Country Cost Valuation of Services: The PECUNIA Reference Unit Cost (RUC) Templates.

Background: Increasing healthcare costs require evidence-based resource use allocation for which assessing costs rigorously and comparably is crucial. Harmonized cross-country costing methods for evaluating interventions from a societal perspective are lacking. This study presents the development process and content of the service costing templates developed as part of the European project PECUNIA.

Understanding the associations between information sources, sociodemographics, and views on public health measures: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria.

Background: Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a key priority for governments globally to ensure agreement with, and subsequently adherence to, imposed public health measures, specifically non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Prior research in this regard highlighted the role of COVID-19 information sources as well as sociodemographic and other personal characteristics, however, there is only limited evidence including both. To bridge this gap, this study investigated the associations of COVID-19 information sources such as social media and participant characteristics with agreement with and adherence to NPIs during the first lockdown in Austria.

Equal in ashes? Exploring socioeconomic inequalities in lifespan based on obituary data in Austria.

Understanding the emergence of and changes in socioeconomic inequalities in lifespan requires reliable, longitudinal data. In the absence of administrative data, published obituaries may be one such alternative source. With the validity of drawing relevant data from obituaries not yet established in population health research, this study addresses this gap by estimating socioeconomic inequalities in lifespan in Vorarlberg, Austria.

The identification of economically relevant health and social care services for mental disorders in the PECUNIA project.

Background: Health economic research is still facing significant problems regarding the standardization and international comparability of health care services. As a result, comparative effectiveness studies and cost-effectiveness analyses are often not comparable. This study is part of the PECUNIA project, which aimed to improve the comparability of economic evaluations by developing instruments for the internationally standardized measurement and valuation of health care services for mental disorders.

Development of an Instrument for the Assessment of Health-Related Multi-sectoral Resource Use in Europe: The PECUNIA RUM.

Background: Measuring objective resource-use quantities is important for generating valid cost estimates in economic evaluations. In the absence of acknowledged guidelines, measurement methods are often chosen based on practicality rather than methodological evidence. Furthermore, few resource-use measurement (RUM) instruments focus on the measurement of resource use in multiple societal sectors and their development process is rarely described.

Unit Costs in Health Economic Evaluations: Quo Vadis, Austria?

Evidence-informed healthcare decision-making relies on high quality data inputs, including robust unit costs, which in many countries are not readily available. The objective of the Department of Health Economics' Unit Cost Online Database, developed based on systematic reviews of Austrian costing studies, is to make conducting economic evaluations from healthcare and societal perspectives more feasible with publicly available unit cost information in Austria. This article aims to describe trends in unit cost data sources and reporting using this comprehensive database as a case study to encourage relevant national and international methodological discussions.

A novel set of Austrian reference unit costs for comprehensive societal perspectives consistent with latest European costing methods for economic evaluations.

Decision making in public health often happens against the background of scarce resources. The systematic use of economic evaluations can be a main enabler in the alignment of public health goals with budgetary constraints. However, the lack of standardized methodology in terms of costing method and perspective are a critical barrier to the implementation of economic evaluations and the international comparability of results.

Effects of add-on Celecoxib treatment on patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and inflammatory cytokine profile trial (TargetFlame): study design and methodology of a multicentre randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

Neuroinflammation has been proposed to impact symptomatology in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. While previous studies have shown equivocal effects of treatments with add-on anti-inflammatory drugs such as Aspirin, N-acetylcysteine and Celecoxib, none have used a subset of prospectively recruited patients exhibiting an inflammatory profile. The aim of the study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety as well as the cost-effectiveness of a treatment with 400 mg Celecoxib added to an ongoing antipsychotic treatment in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders exhibiting an inflammatory profile.

Excess resource use and costs of physical comorbidities in individuals with mental health disorders: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis.

Individuals with mental health disorders (MHDs) have worse physical health than the general population, utilise healthcare resources more frequently and intensively, incurring higher costs. We provide a first comprehensive overview and quantitative synthesis of literature on the magnitude of excess resource use and costs for those with MHDs and comorbid physical health conditions (PHCs). This systematic review (PROSPERO CRD42017075319) searched studies comparing resource use or costs of individuals with MHDs and comorbid PHCs versus individuals without comorbid conditions published between 2007 and 2021.

Harmonization issues in unit costing of service use for multi-country, multi-sectoral health economic evaluations: a scoping review.

Background: Valuation is a critical part of the costing process in health economic evaluations. However, an overview of specific issues relevant to the European context on harmonizing methodological requirements for the valuation of costs to be used in health economic evaluation is lacking. We aimed to inform the development of an international, harmonized and multi-sectoral costing framework, as sought in the European PECUNIA (ProgrammE in Costing, resource use measurement and outcome valuation for Use in multi-sectoral National and International health economic evaluAtions) project.

In Search for Comparability: The PECUNIA Reference Unit Costs for Health and Social Care Services in Europe.

Improving the efficiency of mental healthcare service delivery by learning from international best-practice examples requires valid data, including robust unit costs, which currently often lack cross-country comparability. The European ProgrammE in Costing, resource use measurement and outcome valuation for Use in multi-sectoral National and International health economic evaluAtions (PECUNIA) aimed to harmonize the international unit cost development. This article presents the methodology and set of 36 externally validated, standardized reference unit costs (RUCs) for five health and social care services (general practitioner, dentist, help-line, day-care center, nursing home) in Austria, England, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, and Spain based on unambiguous service definitions using the extended DESDE PECUNIA coding framework.

The most important facilitators and barriers to the use of Health Technology Assessment in Canada: a best-worst scaling approach.

Background: Health Technology Assessment (HTA), which can support public drug reimbursement decisions will play a core function in the planned national Pharmacare program in Canada. To address existing barriers to the use of HTA, these must be ranked in order of priority. The goal of this study was to access the relative importance of known facilitators and barriers to the use of HTA in the context of the Canadian health care system, with attention to differences between regions and stakeholder groups.

[Exercise Behavior, Costs of Physical Inactivity, and Physical Activity Promotion in Austria].

In this article, we present the Austrian data on physical activity, the societal costs and outcomes of physical inactivity, and the areas of influence to promote physical activity. Based on an analysis of the status quo and its consequences, suggestions on relevant measures to counter physical inactivity are made. While the proportion of Austrians that do not fulfill the current recommendations on physical activity is high, the Austrian population is physically more active than many populations of other countries.

Cost and quality-of-life impacts of community treatment orders (CTOs) for patients with psychosis: economic evaluation of the OCTET trial.

Purpose: Current RCT and meta-analyses have not found any effect of community treatment orders (CTOs) on hospital or social outcomes. Assumed positive impacts of CTOs on quality-of-life outcomes and reduced hospital costs are potentially in conflict with patient autonomy. Therefore, an analysis of the cost and quality-of-life consequences of CTOs was conducted within the OCTET trial.

Photo-induced and Rapid Labeling of Tetrazine-Bearing Proteins via Cyclopropenone-Caged Bicyclononynes.

Inverse electron-demand Diels-Alder cycloadditions (iEDDAC) between tetrazines and strained alkenes/alkynes have emerged as essential tools for studying and manipulating biomolecules. A light-triggered version of iEDDAC (photo-iEDDAC) is presented that confers spatio-temporal control to bioorthogonal labeling in vitro and in cellulo. A cyclopropenone-caged dibenzoannulated bicyclo[6.

Cost-of-illness studies in nine Central and Eastern European countries.

Background: To date, a multi-country review evaluating the cost-of-illness (COI) studies from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region has not yet been published. Our main objective was to provide a general description about published COI studies from CEE.

Methods: A systematic search was performed between 1 January 2006 and 1 June 2017 in Medline, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and Web of Science to identify all relevant COI studies from nine CEE countries.

Expanding the genetic code with a lysine derivative bearing an enzymatically removable phenylacetyl group.

We report the genetically encoded incorporation of phenylacetyl protected lysine (PacK) into proteins in Escherichia coli. This unnatural side-chain modification can be enzymatically removed using either penicillin G acylase (PGA) or, surprisingly, the sirtuin SrtN from Bacillus subtilis. Our approach expands the toolbox to reversibly control protein structure and function under very mild and non-denaturing conditions, as demonstrated by triggering the activity of the nonribosomal peptide synthetase GrsA.

The societal costs of chronic pain and its determinants: The case of Austria.

Background: Chronic pain is among the most burdensome conditions. Its prevalence ranges between 12% and 30% in Europe, with an estimated 21% among Austrian adults. The economic impact of chronic pain from a societal perspective, however, has not been sufficiently researched.

Comparison of statistical analysis methods for object case best-worst scaling.

Different methods have been used to analyze "object case" best-worst scaling (BWS). This study aims to compare the most common statistical analysis methods for object case BWS (i.e.