Prof. Michael Schlander

Michael Schlander is a full professor of health economics at the University of Heidelberg. Adhering to the Jülich model, he has been granted leave of absence from the University to act as founding Head of the Division of Health Economics, instituted in January 2017 at the DKFZ. He is also the founding Chairman and Scientific Director of the not-for-profit Institute for Innovation & Valuation in Health Care (InVal-HC) established in 2005 in Wiesbaden. In addition, he is an associate professor at the Alfred Weber Institute for Economics (AWI) of the University of Heidelberg since July 2020.

Professional Background

In 2008, Michael Schlander helped co-found the German Society for Health Economics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie, DGGOe), and in 2012, he acted as the Scientific Chair for the "European ISPOR Congress in Berlin", which had more than 3,500 attendants. He is a member of numerous international scientific associations, including Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi), the International Health Economics Association (IHEA), and the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

In addition to his extensive engagement on peer review boards for a number of medical and economic journals, he is currently serving on the editorial boards of the peer-reviewed Frontiers in Health Services (Cost and Resource Allocation section) and the German language journal Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik (ZfmE).

In 2005, he established a Health Economics Summer School. Formally under the auspices of the University of Heidelberg, the Summer School was later organized by the DKFZ Division of Health Economics in 2019. After an interruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event resumed from February 6-10, 2023 as the "Heidelberg Health Economics Winter School", which took place at its previous location, the Studio Villa Bosch, in Heidelberg. Once again, the event was organized by the DKFZ Division of Health Economics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he represented the DKFZ on the board of a global COVID-19 and Cancer Task Force of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) under the leadership of Professor Richard Sullivan of King's College London. As of 2021, Professor Schlander has been appointed board member of the Health Economics Working Group of the Organization of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) under the leadership of Professor Wim van Harten, Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam. In this context, Professor Schlander inaugurated an international OECI Task Force on Socioeconomic Impact Research, and the emerging consensus on much-needed conceptual and methodological standards in the field was first presented at the Annual European ISPOR Congress in Vienna, November 06-09, 2022.

Professor Schlander 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 University of Frankfurt, his M.B.A. (as valedictorian of the class of 1994) from City University of Seattle, Washington, a diploma in health economics from the Stockholm School of Economics (2002), and the venia legendi for health economics from the University of Heidelberg (2007).

He is the recipient of the "Best Contributed Poster Presentation Award" (out of 750 presentations at the 8th Annual European ISPOR Congress in Florence, Italy, in November 2005) and the "ISPOR Distinguished Service Award" for serving as Scientific Program Chair at the "15th Annual European ISPOR Congress" in Berlin, Germany, in November 2012.

Before joining the DKFZ in 2017, he served as a professor for Health Care & Innovation Management from 2002 to 2016 at the University of Business & Society (Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Ludwigshafen). His teaching experience spans subjects including strategic management, change and innovation management, investment theory and valuation, advanced project valuation, managerial decision-making, decision analysis, health economics and health technology assessment, pharmaceutical economics, and organizational theory and design.

Prior to returning to academia in 2002, he had spent 15 years in executive roles (as Managing Director/CEO; Director of a Strategic Business Unit; Head of Clinical I Euro Development) in the international biopharmaceutical industry with offices in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.

Since his return to academia in 2002, he received numerous unsolicited offers to accept senior and/or executive positions, which he did not pursue. These included the opportunity to return to industry as worldwide vice president of health economics and pricing for one of the top-10 global research-based pharmaceutical companies (2008), the offer to assume the role of head of health economics for one of the leading official HTA agencies in Europe (2009), and an offer from the Mannheim Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg to assume a W3 professorship for "efficiency analysis of diagnostics" (2011).

For further information, please refer to www.michaelschlander.com.

Selected Publications

R.D. Eckford, A. Gaisser, V. Arndt, M. Baumann, E. Kludt, K. Mehlis, J. Ubels, E. C. Winkler, S. Weg-Remers, M. Schlander:
The COVID-19 pandemic and cancer patients in Germany: impact on treatment, follow-up and psychological burden.
Frontiers in Public Health, published online 2022 Feb 9: Article 788598.
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.788598.

J. Ubels, K. Hernandez-Villafuerte, M. Schlander:
The value of freedom: a review of the current developments and conceptual issues in the measurement of capability.
Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, published online ahead of print 2022 Mar 19.
DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2022.2053506.

M. Schlander, K. Hernandez-Villafuerte, C-Y. Cheng, J. Mestre-Ferrandiz, M. Baumann:
How much does it cost to research and develop a new drug? A systematic review and assessment.
Pharmacoeconomics, 2021: 39 (11) 1243-1269.

J. W. März, S. Holm, M. Schlander:
Resource allocation in the Covid-19 health crisis: are Covid-19 preventive measures consistent with the Rule of Rescue?
Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2021: 24 (4) 487-492.

C.-Y. Cheng, T. Datzmann, D. Hernandez, J. Schmitt, M. Schlander:
Do certified cancer provide more cost-effective care? A health economic analysis of colon cancer in Germany using administrative data.
International Journal of Cancer, 2021: 149 (10) 1744-1175M.

T. Ran, S. B. Eichmüller, P. Schmidt, M. Schlander:
Cost of decentralized CAR T-cell production in an academic nonprofit setting.
International Journal of Cancer, 2020: 147 (12): 3438–3445.

J. Richardson, M. Schlander:
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and economic evaluation: efficiency or fairness first.
Journal of Market Access & Health Policy, (2019) 7(1) 1-12.
DOI: 10.1080/20016689.2018.1557981.

J.J. Caro, J.E. Brazier, J. Karnon, P. Kolominsky-Rabas, A. J. McGuire, E. Nord, M. Schlander:
Determining value in Health Technology Assessment: Stay the course or tack away?
PharmacoEconomics, (2019) 37(3) 293-299.
DOI: 10.1007/s40273-018-0742-2.

M. Wagner, D. Samaha, R. Casciano, M. Brougham, P. Abrishami, C. Petrie, B. Avouac, L. Mantovani, A. Sarría-Santamera, P. Kind, M. Schlander, M. Tringali:
Moving towards accountability for reasonableness: A systematic exploration of the features of legitimate healthcare coverage decision-making processes using rare diseases and regenerative therapies as a case study.
International Journal of Health Policy and Management, (2019) 8 (7) 424-443.

R. Schaefer, M. Schlander:
Is the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England more ´innovation-friendly´ than the Federal Joint Committee (GBA) in Germany?
Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research, (2019) 19(4) 453-462.

J. Espin, M. Schlander, B. Godman, P. Anderson, J. Mestre-Ferrandiz, I. Borget, A. Hutchings, S. Flostrand, A. Paranby, C. Jommi:
Projecting pharmaceutical expenditure in EU5 to 2021: adjusting for the impact of discounts and rebates.
Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, (2018) 16.6 803-817

M. Schlander, C.-M. Dintsios, A. Gandjour:
Budgetary Impact and Cost Drivers of Drugs for Rare and Ultrarare Diseases.
Value in Health, (2018) 21 (5) 525-531

M. Schlander, S. Garattini, S. Holm, P. Kolominsky-Rabas, E. Nord, U. Persson, M. Postma, J. Richardson, S. Simoens, O. de Solà Morales, K. Tolley, M. Toumi:
Incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year gained? The need for alternative methods to evaluate medical interventions for ultra-rare disorders.
Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, (2014) 3(4) 399-422.

M. Schlander:
The use of cost-effectiveness by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE): No(t yet) an exemplar of a deliberative process.
Journal of Medical Ethics, 34 (7) (2008) 534-539.
[Paper selected by JME as "Editor's Choice" of the Month]

M. Schlander:
Kosteneffektivität und Ressourcenallokation: Gibt es einen normativen Anspruch der Gesundheitsökonomie?
In: H.A. Kick, J. Taupitz (editors), Gesundheitswesen zwischen Wirtschaftlichkeit und Menschlichkeit.
LIT-Verlag, Münster, 2005: 37-112.

Books and Monographs

M. Schlander, L. Selberg, R. Schaefer:
Nutzen der Labormedizin in der Schweiz.
Springer Nature, Heidelberg, 2023

M. Schlander:
Health Technology Assessments by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE): A Qualitative Study.
Springer, New York, NY, 2007.

M. Schlander:
The Contribution of Health Economics to Market-Oriented Pharmaceutical Research and Development. Universität Witten-Herdecke Verlagsgesellschaft, Witten, 1998.

M. Schlander, D. Schäfer (editors):
Zwei Jahre Gesprächskreis Immunologie Sandoz AG, Nürnberg, 1989-1991. With contributions by M. Freund, H. Gerhartz, C. Huber, T. Jones, R. Kroczek, J. Mason, C. Peschel, A. Raghavachar, D. Schiwek, M. Schlander, and H. Schrezenmeier.
Sandoz AG, Nuremberg (Germany), 1991.

Freund, H. Gerhartz, C. Huber, T. Jones, R. Kroczek, J. Mason, C. Peschel, A. Raghavachar, D. Schiwek, M. Schlander, and H. Schrezenmeier.
Sandoz AG, Nuremberg (Germany), 1991.