Competitiveness of the Health Metropolis Vienna

The study analyses the competitiveness of Vienna's area of leadership "Vienna as a me-tropolis of health", as formulated in the economic and innovation strategy VIENNA 2030, during the period 2019 to 2024. At the core of the investigation is a data-driven SWOT analysis, which creates a detailed profile of strengths and weaknesses for the Vienna met-ropolitan region based on employment data at the level of ÖNACE 4-digit level and com-pares it with four other metropolitan regions in Austria. The results show that cumulative employment growth in industries relevant to the Health Metropolis was three times higher during the analysis period than the cumulative employment growth in the metropolitan re-gion as a whole. Identified strengths include research in the fields of biotechnology, natural sciences, and medicine, as well as pharmacies, and the manufacturing and trade of pharmaceutical products. Opportunities are particularly evident in the manufacturing of medical devices, electromedical equipment, and pharmaceutical raw materials, as well as in the retail of medical goods. Weaknesses and risks due to low localisation, i.e., a lower share of employment than in the comparison regions, or poor embedding in a comple-mentary industry network exist in many industries in the ÖNACE 2008 section "Human health and social work activities". Despite slight structural improvements since 2019, both the lo-calisation and the integration of health-related industries into the existing industry network of the Vienna metropolitan region remain below average compared to other Austrian metropolitan regions, even in 2024.