"Once founders understand health economics, everything clicks — the pitch, the clinical conversations, the product roadmap."
Health Economics for Founders
Most healthcare startups pitch the wrong story. Here's why — and how to fix it.
It's not the most ingenious science, or the most disruptive technology, that wins. It's not any single product feature either. It's the commercial logic that makes your product make sense to investors, to clinicians, to payers, and to the market you're entering.Reimbursement and payer approval aren't stand-alone issues. They're the result of the health economics built into your offer from the start.
The gap most founders miss
You've built something that works. But does it make economic sense to the system it has to live in?
Healthcare products don't just need to work clinically, they need to survive the economic logic of the systems that adopt them. Payers, providers, and commissioners all make decisions through a health economics lens, whether they name it or not.
Most early-stage founders discover this late, after a promising pilot, after a failed procurement, after an investor asks a question they can't answer. We help you get ahead of it.
I work with you on building the ultimate value story, based on numbers, facts, projections, assumptions, models and others to fully convey your commercial potential.
Health economics is a day-zero activity
The value story
Your narrative
Value is not enough, you need to communicate it to all stakeholders. Your value story is about what your product does, and how it does it and why your product matters.
Development
Value is a feature
Your product's value is a feature, just like any other feature. Value needs to be incorporated into your product specification and reviewed in future design reviews.
Investors
State of mind
Investors join your venture in order to make money. Their language is focused on commercial success. If you want to gain their trust, you need to speak their language.
Payers
Is it worth it?
Changing your value proposition after the product has been developed and clinically tested, is close to impossible. Your value proposition has to be baked in to your product.
How I work with you
Building a commercial strategy
Health technology assessment, pricing strategy, and reimbursement negotiations are disciplines most health tech founders encounter too late — after trials are locked, product features are fixed, and the architecture of the value story is already set. Health Economics is your economic strategy.There's no single method that fits every company. A pre-seed diagnostics startup starts somewhere different than a Series B company preparing a NICE submission. What matters is bringing the right tool in before the product or trial design has already closed the door on the strongest argument.The approach: a working toolbox, applied to where a company actually stands.
My Toolbox
HTA and Pricing Strategy
The methodology of assessment
HTA is the methodology payers use to decide what you're being compared against, and how much better you are than that comparator. That comparison, not your product alone, sets the ceiling on what you can charge and how you argue for it. With its payer-focus, HTA is only part of the story, albeit central.
Reimbursement and Payers
Covering the full scope
Reimbursement rules vary sharply by country, and often by payer within the same country. What justifies a price in Germany won't necessarily work in the UK or Portugal. Strategy has to be built payer by payer, not assumed to travel. Market and payer sequencing is strategy.
PICO
A strategic business decision
Defining your Population,
Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome early is the single highest-leverage move you can make. It will guide you from day zero to commercial success.
QALY
Quality Adjusted Life Years
Your impact will be translated in to money. Since costs are in money, benefits will also be translated to money. Pricing and budgets are always constrained, and cost and benefits must be quantified for decision making.
ICER
Incremental Value
The Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) suggests that it is not enough to create value, you have to be better than the incumbent. To justify your pricing, you need to clarify ALL values using a framework like General Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, the ISPOR value flower or other. But, prices don't always align with value, and while our health is extremely important, reality includes budget constraints, population size and other considerations.
Economic Models
Economic Modelling
An economic model translates clinical data into the language payers actually decide on: cost-effectiveness, budget impact, cost-offset. The choice of model, whether a decision-tree, a montecarlo smulation, a Markov model or other, shapes which comparators, time horizon, and outcomes get emphasized. Built early, the model is a tool for testing which commercial argument actually holds up before you commit to it and join the first payer meeting.
Dan J. Gelvan, Phd
Dr. Dan J. Gelvan is a health economist and entrepreneur with over three decades of experience
at the intersection of academic economics, venture capital, and health technology innovation. He
holds a BA and MA in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD in Economics
from Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark.
His investment career spans senior leadership roles in both venture capital and digital health. As
Managing Director of Aurum Ventures MKI, a fund with assets under management exceeding $100 million, he oversaw investments across a portfolio of technology and life science companies.
He subsequently served as CEO of t-syte, a digital health investor and incubator, where he worked
directly with early-stage health tech ventures on strategy, commercial positioning, and economic
viability.
Across his career, Dr. Gelvan has been involved with more than 30 health technology start-ups —
as founder, CEO, board member, chairman, or strategic advisor. These companies have collectively raised more than $750 million and 6 have been exited. This breadth of hands-on
experience is what distinguishes his teaching: the frameworks he presents are not theoretical
constructs but tools he has used, stress-tested, and refined across decades of real ventures, real
investment decisions, and real market access challenges.
"Working with Dan, we realized the smarter move wasn't a complex decision-support system; it was a faster, more lucrative path to market. That reframing changed our whole roadmap." Lior Yadin, CEO and Founder
"Dan has been a strategic advisor to our company for several years and has played a key role in strengthening our U.S. go-to-market strategy. His deep expertise in health economics, commercial strategy, and the dynamics of the U.S. healthcare landscape has supported critical commercial decision-making and opened doors to key industry stakeholders."
Thea Wulff Olesen, CEO
"Dan pushed us to get precise about the right clinical setting for our navigation systems, one shift that ended up focusing both our development and our commercial strategy." Erez Lampert, CEO and Founder
"We didn't bring Dan in for a single deliverable. He's part of every commercial discussion we have, and he's the one who keeps the economics honest." Dr. Amir Hadid, CEO and Co-Founder
"Dan made it clear early on that the value arguments that work in Europe don't automatically work in the US, and vice versa. That saved us from spreading our efforts too thin." Dr. Maya Kahan Hanum, CEO and Co-Founder
The Impact
Improved probability of success
Getting the health economics right from the beginning improves your odds across the board: better communication with future partners and employees, staying on track with R&D, stronger relationships with clinicians and regulators, and eventually a positive HTA that drives premium reimbursement and payer approval.
I've invested in, consulted for, served on the board of, or worked with more than 50 startups, and the pattern holds: the companies that build commercial thinking early on are the ones that raise more and exit more. It's rarely the most ingenious science or the most disruptive technology that wins. It's clear commercial reasoning.
FAQs
Read the thinking behind the practice.
Every week on Substack: frameworks, case studies, and honest analysis of the health economics questions early-stage founders are actually facing.
Feel free to reach out for a free value-tuning meeting
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