Your PhD Project
Developing a Sustainable Business Model for Digital Disease Prevention in Switzerland
As a PhD student, you will lead and shape Subproject 5, which focuses on business model innovation for prevention. Your research will examine how digital precision prevention services can create value simultaneously for individuals, insurers, providers, public authorities, and society.

Key Research Focus

Designing and evaluating business models for upstream disease prevention
Aligning incentives across insurers, providers, public authorities, and digital health companies
Integrating prevention into existing reimbursement, tariff, and policy frameworks
Assessing economic viability, return on investment, and social impact

Translating prevention from pilot projects into scalable, long-term solutions

T2D prevention will be your core empirical context, while your theoretical contributions will be relevant across non-communicable diseases and healthy longevity initiatives.

Your Role and Responsibilities
You will be involved across the full project lifecycle:
Stakeholder Co-Creation and Field Research

Work directly with Switzerland's largest health insurers
Collaborate with cantonal health authorities, hospitals, and provider networks
Conduct co-design workshops, expert interviews, focus groups, and surveys
Coordinate interdisciplinary partners across academia, industry, and the public sector

Health Economics and Business Model Analysis

Perform cost-benefit analyses, break-even calculations, and economic simulations
Analyze insurer data, Swiss tariff systems (e.g. TarDoc), and prevention cost structures
Evaluate value-based prevention and investment cases for insurers and public payers
Study regulatory, reimbursement, and operational barriers to adoption

Implementation and Scale-Up

Support pilot implementations of digital preventive interventions

Analyze engagement, outcome, and adoption data

Co-develop policy guidance and an open-access business model toolkit for national scale-up
Contribute to dissemination via policy webinars and practitioner-oriented outputs

Academic Output

Publish in high-quality international journals in management, digital health, and health economics
Present findings at leading academic and practitioner conferences
Complete a cumulative or monographic PhD dissertation at HSG

Your profile

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with the ambition to shape the future of prevention-driven healthcare.
Required Qualifications

Master's degree from a qualified university with a minimum grade of 5.0 (Swiss grading system)
Excellent proficiency in German and English
Strong interest in health economics, health technology assessment, and economic evaluation
Ability to coordinate and communicate with diverse stakeholders, including senior decision-makers
High intrinsic motivation to work on interdisciplinary, applied research with societal impact

Desired Background

Business administration, management, economics, health economics, public policy, or related fields
Experience with qualitative and quantitative research methods
Interest in digital health, prevention, and healthy longevity

We are more than happy to offer a fully funded PhD Position (100%, 3.5 years) at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) on Business Models for Healthy Longevity and Scalable Disease Prevention with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) Prevention as a use case. This PhD position in Management (Business Innovation) is offered within the new Innosuisse Flagship project Swiss Precision Digital Therapeutics for the Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes. The successful candidate focuses on one of the most critical questions in modern healthcare systems: How can disease prevention be made economically viable, scalable, and socially beneficial?
While T2D prevention serves as the primary empirical case, the research addresses a broader challenge: developing sustainable business models for digital prevention and healthy longevity within the Swiss healthcare system.

Required application documents:

Cover letter addressed to Dr. Mia Jovanova, Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, and Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch, explaining (a) why you wish to pursue a PhD at HSG and (b) your motivation for working on prevention, business models, and this specific topic.
Curriculum Vitae (CV) in English
Transcript of records / overview of grades
At least two letters of recommendation
Written reflections on prevention business models in Switzerland (see background material below):

One qualitative reflection (min. 1 page)
One quantitative reflection (e.g., cost-effectiveness simulation; min. 1 page)

Both reflections should critically examine how disease prevention in Switzerland can be made viable from a business-model perspective, taking into account:

Swiss society and public health institutions (e.g., BAG, Health Promotion Switzerland)
Individuals at risk of chronic diseases
Health insurers
Digital prevention and longevity companies

Example background references for the tasks are available here: https://www.c4dhi.org/news/251218-phd-position-business-models-for-healthy-longevity-scalable-disease-prevention/

We are looking forward to your online-application stating the job ID 2689

apply here

Inspirational Work Environment

Executive Education

Network

Family & Career

Equal Opportunities

Fit and Healthy

Further information on working at the HSG can be found here.

For job-related questions

Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch
Director, School of Medicine

Dr. Mia Jovanova
PostDoc/Academic Researcher CSS Health Lab

Your place of work

University of St.Gallen

«A place where knowledge is created» - As one of Europe's leading universities of economics and business administration, the University of St.Gallen (HSG), Switzerland, is committed to the education of over 10'000 students. The HSG is one of the largest employers in the region and provides an attractive and innovative environment for more than 3'500 researchers, educators and professional staff.

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