Professor Michael Schlander
M.D., PH.D., M.B.A.
Michael Schlander is founding chairman of the not-for-profit Institute for Innovation & Valuation in Health Care (InnoValHC) in Wiesbaden, Germany (as of 2005). He is professor for health economics at the University of Heidelberg (since 2007). He was granted leave of absence by the university to establish and lead a new division of health economics at the German Cancer Research Center (“DKFZ”, from 2017 through 2024). He is a member of scientific associations including the International Health Economics Association (iHEA), the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), and Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi); in 2008, he was a co-founder of the German Society for Health Economics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie, DGGÖ). He further acted as scientific program chair of the 15th Annual European Congress of ISPOR, with more than 3,500 attendants - the largest convention of the discipline held in Germany to date.
Management Experience
After six years in experimental brain research and clinical neurology, he joined the international pharmaceutical industry in 1987, where he spent 15 years in executive roles in clinical development (1987-1993), marketing (1993-1998), and general management (1998-2002) in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. Inter alia, he led the one of most successful new product launches ever accomplished by a German pharmaceutical company (pantoprazole). He also managed the turn-around of a medium-sized German pharmaceutical company, successfully refocusing the enterprise towards a research-based niche strategy – consistently achieving double-digit growth rates (revenues and profits) ever since.
Academic Background
He studied medicine and psychology at the University of Frankfurt and has been licensed as a physician in Germany since 1985. He received his M.D. (summa cum laude) from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, an M.B.A. degree (as valedictorian of the class of 1994) from City University of Seattle, Washington, a diploma in health economics from the Stockholm School of Economics, and the venia legendi (Ph.D. equivalent) for health economics from the University of Heidelberg (2007). His scientific publications include three monographs, on ‘The Contribution of Health Economics to Market-Oriented Pharmaceutical Research and Development’ (Witten/Herdecke University Press; Witten, Germany: 1998), on ‘Health Technology Assessments by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)’ in England and Wales (Springer; New York, NY: 2007), and on The Value of Laboratory Medicine in Switzerland (in German, “Nutzen der Labormedizin in der Schweiz”, with Ramon Schäfer and Lorenz Selberg; Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, Germany: 2023). A new volume on the normative foundations of health economic evaluation methods is scheduled to appear with Springer shortly.
He is the recipient of the ISPOR Distinguished Service Award for acting as scientific program chair at the 15th Annual European ISPOR Congress in Berlin, Germany, in November 2012. He further won two scientific presentation awards at European ISPOR Conferences, a Best Contributed Poster Presentation Award in 2005 (out of 750 presentations at the 8th Annual European ISPOR Congress in Florence, Italy, in November 2005), and with Ramon Schaefer (presenting author), Diego Hernandez and Oliver Schwarz the Best General Poster Research Award (out of 2,500 presentations at the ISPOR Europe 2023 Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, November 2023).