A Practical Guide for MedTech and Digital Health Companies in Denmark
DENMARK DIGITAL HEALTH
The Danish Health Reform is transforming how healthcare decisions are made in Denmark. This guide explains how medtech, digital health, biotech, diagnostics, and medical device companies can use the Danish Health Reform and the new Health Councils (Sundhedsråd) to prepare for adoption during the 2026 transition year and full implementation in 2027. It provides practical guidance on how to position technologies for the Danish health system, engage Health Councils, and align with Denmark’s shift toward care closer to home.
Denmark has initiated a healthcare reform that fundamentally alters how value is created, governed, and scaled within a national health system. The Danish Health Reform 2024, agreed by Parliament in November 2024, introduces a new structural logic: healthcare decisions, resources, and accountability are being deliberately repositioned closer to local populations through the establishment of 17 Health Councils (Sundhedsråd).
These councils are not peripheral governance bodies. They are the primary locus of future healthcare design and investment. With delegated authority over local health planning, resource prioritisation, and service development, the Health Councils represent a decisive shift away from centralised, hospital-centric decision-making toward locally accountable system management.
Although the new structure formally comes into force on 1 January 2027, the reform explicitly defines 2026 as a transition year. During this period, preparatory Health Councils are already operating, local health plans are being designed, and new models of care delivery are being specified. Strategic positions taken during this phase will determine which solutions become embedded in Denmark’s future care pathways.
For MedTech, biotech, digital health companies, diagnostics developers, and medical manufacturers, this reform creates a rare strategic opening. Denmark is no longer best understood as a test market or a reference country. It is becoming a structural launch market one where early alignment with system design confers long-term advantage.
Companies that approach Denmark through traditional lenses national reimbursement, central HTA, or hospital-by-hospital sales will miss this opportunity. Those that align their offerings with the operational priorities of Health Councils care closer to home, chronic disease management, workforce sustainability, and cross-sector coordination can position themselves as enabling infrastructure rather than discretionary products.
This blog outlines how the Danish reform changes the rules of engagement, why early action matters, and how companies can use Denmark strategically during the transition phase to secure durable system-level adoption.
Denmark Is Redesigning the Basis of Competition in Healthcare
Healthcare systems do not change their performance by adjusting individual components. They change when the structure of decision-making, incentives, and accountability is redesigned.
The Danish Health Reform 2024 is best understood in these terms. It is not an incremental policy initiative, nor a collection of isolated programmes. It is a deliberate re-architecture of the Danish healthcare system, intended to correct long-standing misalignments between where care is delivered, where costs are incurred, and where outcomes are realised.
The reform responds to structural pressures common across advanced health systems: rising chronic disease, demographic ageing, workforce shortages, and fragmentation between hospitals, primary care, psychiatry, and municipal services. Denmark’s response is distinctive because it addresses these pressures at the level of governance design, not merely funding.
The introduction of 17 Health Councils is the central structural innovation. These councils consolidate regional and municipal decision-making within defined geographies and give local political leadership direct responsibility for healthcare performance. Their mandate is explicit: redesign care delivery so that services are provided closer to citizens, resources are allocated according to local need, and coordination failures across sectors are reduced.
From a strategic perspective, this shift has immediate implications.
First, the locus of value creation is moving away from hospitals toward integrated local care systems. Second, purchasing decisions will increasingly be driven by system performance metrics utilisation, workforce capacity, pathway efficiency rather than by individual clinical departments. Third, solutions that enable coordination, substitution of physical pathways, and prevention of escalation will become structurally advantaged.
Importantly, these changes are not hypothetical. The reform establishes 2026 as a transition year precisely to allow Health Councils to design new operating models before full implementation in 2027. In strategic terms, this is the period during which standards are set, partners are chosen, and roles are defined.
For companies operating in MedTech, biotech, digital health, diagnostics, and medical manufacturing, Denmark should therefore be viewed not as a mature, saturated market, but as a system undergoing controlled redesign. The opportunity is not to sell into the existing system, but to become part of the system that is being built.
Those who recognise this shift early will shape the future competitive landscape. Those who arrive later will compete within it.
Why the Danish Reform Changes the Basis of Adoption
Most healthcare reforms adjust funding levels, introduce new programmes, or refine regulatory rules. The Danish Health Reform does something more consequential: it changes who decides, what they optimise for, and how adoption occurs.
Historically, companies entering Denmark as in most European systems have oriented themselves around hospitals, national reimbursement mechanisms, or central policy bodies. Adoption followed a familiar pattern: demonstrate clinical value, secure reimbursement visibility, and compete for procurement within existing institutional silos.
The reform disrupts this logic.
By establishing 17 Health Councils with delegated responsibility for local health planning and resource prioritisation, Denmark is relocating decision-making authority away from individual hospitals and centralised bodies toward geographically defined system stewards. These councils are accountable not for isolated clinical outcomes, but for overall system performance within their population.
This has direct implications for how technologies are assessed and adopted.
Health Councils are not evaluating products in isolation. They are redesigning pathways. Their core questions are not:
- Is this technology innovative?
- Is it reimbursed nationally?
Instead, they ask:
- Does this reduce demand on hospitals?
- Does it allow care to move closer to home?
- Does it relieve pressure on scarce clinical staff?
- Does it improve coordination across general practice, hospitals, and municipalities?
In this environment, adoption no longer follows traditional procurement logic. It follows pathway logic.
Technologies that align with how Health Councils are restructuring services particularly in chronic care, home treatment, prevention, and rehabilitation become strategically relevant regardless of whether they fit legacy purchasing frameworks. Conversely, technologies that rely solely on departmental champions or national-level reimbursement decisions risk structural misalignment.
The Danish reform therefore does not merely change where decisions are made. It changes the basis on which value is recognised.
Understanding this shift is the prerequisite for using Denmark strategically.
Where Value Is Now Being Created in Denmark
When governance structures change, value does not disappear; it moves. The Danish Health Reform makes explicit where future value creation is expected to occur and, by implication, where investment and adoption will concentrate.
Under the new model, Health Councils are charged with improving system performance across defined populations. Their mandate prioritises outcomes that are operational, structural, and cumulative, rather than episodic or departmental. As a result, value is increasingly created in four interrelated domains.
First, care closer to the citizen.
The reform explicitly shifts resources toward home treatment teams, acute nursing outside hospitals, and community-based services. Technologies that enable diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, or follow-up without requiring hospital attendance directly support this objective. Value here is measured not in novelty, but in avoidable admissions, shortened lengths of stay, and reduced physical infrastructure dependency.
Second, chronic disease pathways.
Health Councils are responsible for developing coordinated, longitudinal care pathways for chronic conditions. This creates demand for solutions that support continuity rather than intervention: monitoring tools, decision support, early detection, adherence support, and pathway orchestration. The relevant unit of value is no longer the encounter, but the trajectory of care over time.
Third, workforce productivity and substitution.
Denmark’s reform is as much a labour strategy as a clinical one. Councils must deliver care with constrained staffing, particularly in general practice and nursing. Technologies that allow tasks to be shifted, simplified, or automated or that enable non-physician staff to work at the top of their license create immediate system value. In this context, time saved is often more valuable than marginal clinical improvement.
Fourth, coordination across sectors.
Fragmentation between hospitals, general practice, psychiatry, and municipalities is a central target of the reform. Solutions that improve information flow, responsibility handover, and shared decision-making across these boundaries address a structural weakness of the system. Their value lies in reducing friction, not adding functionality.
These domains share a common feature: value is realised at the system level, not at the level of individual departments or products. Technologies that succeed under the new Danish model will be those that can clearly articulate how they contribute to these priorities and, critically, what existing demand they reduce or replace.
This reframing is essential. Health Councils are not seeking more technology. They are seeking fewer failure points in the system.
Companies that understand where value is now being created can position themselves accordingly. Those that do not will continue to compete on dimensions that no longer determine adoption.
How to Position a Technology for Health Councils
Positioning for Denmark’s Health Councils is not a communications exercise. It is a strategic alignment problem. The councils are not looking for better products; they are looking for components of a redesigned system.
The first step is to reposition the technology conceptually. Technologies should not be presented as innovations seeking adoption, but as enabling infrastructure that supports the council’s mandate. This requires a shift away from feature-led narratives toward functional substitution: what part of the existing system does this technology allow the council to do differently, less often, or not at all?
Effective positioning therefore starts with a concrete answer to a simple question:
Which physical, organisational, or workforce-dependent pathway does this reduce or replace?
A technology that enables remote monitoring is not valuable because it is digital; it is valuable because it reduces follow-up visits, delays escalation, or stabilises patients at home. A diagnostic is not valuable because it is faster; it is valuable because it shortens uncertainty, avoids unnecessary referral, or enables earlier intervention within the community. Health Councils think in these terms.
The second requirement is to translate outcomes into operational metrics. Councils are accountable for system performance, not academic endpoints. Positioning should therefore focus on:
- admissions avoided
- days of hospital care displaced
- clinician time released
- handovers reduced
- capacity stabilised during peak demand
Clinical evidence remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. What matters is whether the technology makes the system easier to run.
Third, technologies must be framed as cross-sectoral tools, not department-specific solutions. Health Councils sit at the intersection of hospitals, general practice, psychiatry, and municipalities. A solution that only benefits one actor, while creating work for another, will struggle. By contrast, technologies that simplify coordination, clarify responsibility, or smooth transitions between settings align naturally with council incentives.
Finally, positioning must be local by design. Councils operate within defined geographies, with specific workforce constraints, disease burdens, and service gaps. Technologies that can be adapted to local configuration rather than imposed as fixed models are more likely to be incorporated into local health plans.
In practical terms, successful positioning in Denmark requires companies to stop asking “How do we sell this?” and instead ask “How does this help a Health Council redesign care?”
Those that can answer that question clearly do not need to persuade. They become relevant by default.
What to Do in the 2026 Transition Year
In most health systems, transition periods are treated as pauses. In Denmark’s reform, 2026 is explicitly a design phase. The Health Councils are being formed, their mandates clarified, and most importantly their local operating models are being written. For companies, this is not a waiting period; it is the moment when future relevance is determined.
During 2026, Health Councils are tasked with developing local health plans, defining priority pathways, and determining how care will be shifted out of hospitals and into community settings. These decisions will shape procurement, partnerships, and service configuration for years. Once these plans are formalised in 2027, change becomes slower and more incremental.
The most important action companies can take in 2026 is therefore to engage without selling. This does not mean passive observation. It means contributing to problem definition rather than proposing solutions prematurely. Companies that enter discussions by demonstrating understanding of local constraints workforce shortages, coordination gaps, capacity pressure establish credibility as system partners rather than vendors.
Second, 2026 is the appropriate time to pursue co-designed pilots, not scaled deployments. Health Councils are exploring how services should work, not which products to buy. Pilots that focus on pathway redesign, workforce relief, or substitution of physical care and that generate operational data rather than promotional case studies align with this purpose. The objective is learning, not revenue.
Third, companies should aim for inclusion in local planning documents, not contracts. Being referenced in a local health plan as an enabling component of a pathway is strategically more valuable than a short-term pilot agreement. It signals structural fit and creates a default position when budgets and authority fully transfer in 2027.
Finally, companies must use the transition year to adapt their own operating models. Denmark will reward flexibility: solutions that can be configured differently across councils, integrated with existing services, and adjusted to local workforce realities. Fixed, one-size-fits-all propositions will struggle in a system designed around local variation.
The strategic objective for 2026 is therefore clear:
not to maximise short-term adoption, but to secure long-term structural inclusion.
Companies that treat the transition year as an opportunity to help shape the system will enter 2027 as known quantities. Those that wait for formal authority to arrive will find that the system has already been designed without them.
Strategic Mistakes to Avoid
Periods of system redesign create opportunity, but they also amplify error. In Denmark, the most common strategic mistakes companies will make are not technical; they are conceptual.
The first mistake is waiting for national reimbursement signals. The Danish reform deliberately decentralises priority-setting to Health Councils. While national frameworks remain important, early adoption will be driven by local system needs, not central tariff decisions. Companies that delay engagement until reimbursement pathways are fully defined will arrive after local models have already been chosen.
The second mistake is over-investing in traditional evidence narratives. Randomised trials, comparative effectiveness studies, and regulatory milestones remain necessary foundations, but they do not answer the questions Health Councils are asking. Councils are focused on capacity, coordination, and workforce sustainability. Companies that lead with academic endpoints rather than operational impact risk appearing misaligned with the reform’s objectives.
A third mistake is treating Denmark as a reference market rather than a build market. Historically, Denmark has been used to generate high-quality data for use elsewhere. Under the new structure, Denmark offers something more valuable: the chance to become embedded in redesigned care pathways. Companies that focus solely on extracting evidence will miss the opportunity to shape how care is actually delivered.
The fourth mistake is selling to individual institutions in isolation. Departmental champions and hospital procurement processes still matter, but they are no longer sufficient. Health Councils evaluate technologies based on system-wide consequences. Solutions that benefit one part of the system while creating cost or workload elsewhere will struggle to gain traction.
Finally, companies must avoid assuming that scale comes first. In Denmark, scale follows structure. Early success will come from being useful, adaptable, and trusted during the transition period. Revenue growth will follow once the new governance model is fully operational.
The Danish Health Reform rewards a particular kind of strategy: patient, system-aware, and structurally aligned. Companies that understand this will not need to compete aggressively for attention. They will find themselves incorporated into the system as it takes shape.
Those that do not will find that, by the time the system is fully live, the most important decisions have already been made.
References and Policy Sources
- Indenrigs- og Sundhedsministeriet (Ministry of the Interior and Health), Denmark.
Aftale om sundhedsreform 2024.
Political agreement between the Danish Government and parliamentary parties, 15 November 2024.
Official legislative and governance framework establishing the new health structure, regions, and Health Councils (Sundhedsråd). https://www.ism.dk/Media/638954298352847005/Danish%20Health%20Care%20Reform%202024%20%20in%20brief.pdf - Ministry of the Interior and Health, Denmark.
Danish Health Care Reform 2024 – in brief.
May 2025.
Summary document outlining key reform elements, timelines, and responsibilities, including the transition year (2026) and full implementation from 1 January 2027. https://www.regioner.dk/services/publikationer/sundhed/haandbog-om-sundhedsraad/
- Sundhedsstrukturkommissionen (Health Care Structural Commission).
Report on the future organisation of the Danish healthcare system.
June 2024.
Independent commission report forming the analytical and structural basis for the 2024 health reform, including governance design, decentralisation, and care closer to citizens.
- World Health Organization – European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
Denmark: Health System Review.
Most recent edition.
Contextual analysis of the Danish health system, governance arrangements, and reform trajectory within a European perspective. - OECD.
Health at a Glance: Europe and OECD Reviews of Health Systems Denmark.
Comparative data and analysis on health system performance, workforce pressures, chronic disease burden, and service integration.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Danish Health Reform
1. What is the Danish Health Reform, and why does it matter for MedTech and digital health companies?
The Danish Health Reform 2024 is a structural redesign of the Danish health system that shifts decision-making, planning, and resource allocation to 17 Health Councils (Sundhedsråd). For MedTech, digital health, biotech, diagnostics, and medical device companies, this reform matters because healthcare adoption in Denmark will increasingly be driven by local system priorities, rather than national procurement or hospital-led purchasing alone. Technologies that support care closer to home, chronic disease pathways, workforce productivity, and cross-sector coordination are structurally advantaged under the Danish Health Reform.
2. What are Health Councils (Sundhedsråd) in Denmark, and how do they make decisions?
Health Councils (Sundhedsråd) are politically empowered regional–municipal bodies created under the Danish Health Reform to oversee local health planning, prioritisation, and service development. Unlike hospital committees or advisory groups, Health Councils take responsibility for entire care pathways across hospitals, general practice, psychiatry, and municipalities. Their decisions are based on system performance metrics such as capacity, coordination, workforce sustainability, and continuity of care, rather than on individual products, departments, or technologies in isolation.
3. When does the Danish Health Reform take effect, and why is 2026 important?
The new Danish health system structure comes fully into force on 1 January 2027, but 2026 is a formal transition and system-design year. During 2026, preparatory Health Councils are established, local health plans are written, and future care models are defined. For MedTech and digital health companies, 2026 is the most important period to engage — not to sell, but to help shape pathways, pilots, and service models before strategic decisions become fixed under the Danish Health Reform.
4. How should MedTech and digital health companies position themselves under the Danish Health Reform?
Under the Danish Health Reform, companies should position their technologies as system-enabling infrastructure, not standalone innovations. Health Councils assess solutions based on whether they reduce hospital demand, enable care closer to home, improve cross-sector coordination, or relieve workforce pressure. Effective positioning focuses on operational impact — such as admissions avoided, clinician time released, or pathways simplified — rather than solely on clinical novelty, product features, or traditional reimbursement arguments.
5. Is Denmark mainly a reference market, or can it support real adoption under the Danish Health Reform?
Under the Danish Health Reform, Denmark should be viewed as a build market, not merely a reference market. While Denmark has historically been used to generate evidence for use elsewhere, the Health Council structure allows companies to become embedded in redesigned care pathways. Technologies that align early with local health plans, workforce constraints, and system priorities can achieve real adoption and long-term relevance within the Danish health system, rather than remaining limited to pilots or case studies.