From the NHS to Denmark: landing your digital health story

As part of the DigitalHealth.London Global programme, Benjamin Thodberg – Head of Nordics at &Robin – shares his observations, recommendations, and reflections on Denmark’s communications environment for UK-based innovators.

Interested in learning more about international opportunities for expansion? Find out about the DigitalHealth.London Global webinar programme.

&Robin is a Copenhagen-based communications agency specialising in healthcare. We work with teams and global organisations who need to explain complex health products clearly, credibly, and in a way that fits local systems and requirements.

If you’ve built momentum as an innovator navigating the NHS, you’ll already know that trust, evidence, and governance are what turn interest into adoption. This article will help you apply those same methods to Denmark, taking the guesswork out of navigating a new market.

This piece offers a clearer sense of how Denmark differs as a communications environment, what to adjust in your messaging before you start outreach, and what tends to work when you treat Denmark as more than a one-off pilot destination.

What’s different about Denmark?

Denmark’s healthcare system is compact and closely connected. With around 5.9 million people and an administrative structure split between the state, five regions, and 98 municipalities, the ecosystem is dense. People talk across organisations and word travels quickly. In practical terms, your first few meetings and assets are about more than just starting a pipeline, it shapes how the market categorises you. If you seem credible, that credibility can become what you are known for. If your messaging appears confused or over-confident, that impression can travel faster than you expect.

“Digital” is not a differentiator here, it’s expected.

A key part of creating credibility is trust. Denmark’s universal, tax-funded model creates high expectations of transparency and public value. That means communications that feel too commercial, too over-hyped, or too pitchy can backfire. In Denmark, trust is not an emotional state. It’s closer to an operating principle: can the system rely on you without taking on unnecessary risk?

Denmark is also highly digital, and that matters in an understated way. “Digital” is not a differentiator here, it’s expected. National interoperability work is mature and organisations are used to standards, certification and secure exchange. So if your headline is “we digitise…”, Danish stakeholders may be thinking “yes, and?” They will typically care more about pathway fit, integration readiness, governance, and outcomes you can document.

Finally, Denmark’s high-trust culture comes with high expectations around claims discipline. If you market a medical device, Danish guidance emphasises that advertising must not be misleading and should align with intended purpose, pointing both to Danish advertising rules and EU principles like the prohibition on misleading claims. This is often where UK teams misread the room: language that feels normal in a pitch deck can feel risky in Denmark if it isn’t tightly anchored to evidence and scope.

Adjusting a UK digital health story to land in Denmark

The most important shift is to build a Denmark-specific narrative rather than exporting a UK one. NHS traction can help, but Denmark tends to buy fit before it buys fame. A Denmark-ready story explains the problem in local terms and shows where you sit in the Danish care pathway – whether that’s hospital, general practice, or municipal services. This matters because Denmark’s delivery model is not the NHS in miniature. Municipalities play a significant role in services outside hospitals, and regions run hospitals.

If you only change one thing in your communications for Denmark, make it this: move from persuasion language to clarity language.

The second shift is tone. In our experience, Denmark tends to respond well to communication that is direct, low-drama, and evidence-led. Keep sentences short. Replace superlatives with specifics. Make it clear what is proven versus what you expect to prove, and be explicit about limits. Saying “this is what we don’t do” often increases trust because it signals control and responsibility. If you only change one thing in your communications for Denmark, make it this: move from persuasion language to clarity language.

Next, lead with public value before commercial value. In a tax-funded system, many stakeholders will want to understand patient benefit, staff impact, safety, and governance before they engage seriously with price and scaling. You can still talk business model, but you’ll often get further by earning the right to discuss it.

Language choice matters too. English is usually fine for early B2B conversations in Denmark, especially with leadership and digital teams. However, if you want adoption, plan to communicate in Danish earlier than you think for anything patient-facing or used by frontline staff: training, onboarding, workflow guidance, and public-facing information. Leaving this too late creates friction right when implementation needs momentum.

Denmark doesn’t just want reassurance, it wants an explainable governance story.

Denmark is open to pilots and co-creation, but there is fatigue with “pilot tourism”. Signaling long-term commitment is beneficial in this market. The strongest signal is rarely a slogan, it’s practical proof: a Denmark-ready landing page, a deck that maps to Danish pathways, clear outcomes you will measure and share, and local partners or advisors who stand next to you when you enter the room.

Finally, make your safety and claims story easy to repeat. In our experience, Denmark doesn’t just want reassurance, it wants an explainable governance story. Outline what you are (and are not); how you avoid misleading claims; what evidence you have; and how you handle monitoring, incidents and updates. If your product sits within medical device marketing rules, align outward messaging with the Danish Medicines Agency guidance referenced above, and avoid language that could be read as broader than your intended purpose.

Using Denmark as a testbed

Denmark can be an excellent testbed for digital health because the ecosystem is digitally mature and well-connected. However, those same qualities make it an unforgiving market too. If you treat Denmark as a quick pilot destination, the market will notice. If you treat it as a place to build a durable model, pathway fit, governance, safety language, and real-world evidence, you often end up with capabilities that travel well back into the NHS and beyond.

Your tone, your claims discipline, and your governance story are not marketing polish – they are strong signals of whether the system can safely rely on you.

It’s also worth being careful with the word “Nordics”. The Nordic countries share values, equity, welfare-state logic, and high digital maturity, but their structures, incentives, and vocabularies differ. Denmark is not a plug-and-play template for the region, and a generic “Nordics strategy” often becomes too vague to land anywhere. Designing for Denmark first forces discipline: you get clearer about pathways, clearer about claims, and clearer about what you can actually measure. Then you can generalise what truly travels.

If there is one overarching lesson, it is that communication is part of the product in Denmark. Your tone, your claims discipline, and your governance story are not marketing polish – they are strong signals of whether the system can safely rely on you.

&Robin is a Copenhagen-based strategic and creative agency dedicated to health. Working across pharma, medtech, and wellbeing, &Robin covers the full commercial journey: from brand strategy and value proposition development through to campaign execution, HCP and patient communications, and market launch. Rooted in the Nordics, the agency works with companies operating globally and activating locally.

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