Closing gaps to accelerate meaningful change

The people we build all of this for are also the people running out of capacity to deliver it.

Lacuna Advisors

Lacuna Advisors is a Geneva consultancy working at the crossroads of global health policy, health systems strengthening, digital innovation and novel financing.

Solving problems in the gap

We are brought in when a problem sits across sectors, across borders, or across the line between public mandate and private capability, which is where most of the problems worth solving now sit.

We are attuned to the spaces where opportunity is hidden rather than advertised. We work selectively, with founders, funds, governments and institutions who are driven by more than the deal, and we tend to stay long after the strategy is signed off.

Shaping policy with global impact

For two decades we have advised heads of state, ministries, royal families and chief executives across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior investment committee roles with KHP Ventures, a King’s College London joint venture, and the Global Bio Fund. The deployment of digital surgical technology in East Africa, led from this practice, was one subject of a Harvard Business School case study.

Our services

01

Strategy and institutional design

We build the entity, the governance structure, the operating model, the whole architecture. Several of the institutions we advise didn’t exist before we started.

02

Health systems and market entry

We’re on the ground across East and West Africa. Ministries, county governments, professional societies, teaching and referral hospitals, regulatory pathways, and the delivery models that keep working once the pilot funding runs out.

03

Public and private partnership

We bring governments, multilaterals, corporates and funders together, and we build programmes that survive a change of administration, a new chief executive, or a funding climate that shifts overnight.

04

Investment and due diligence

Commercial and clinical due diligence, deal structuring, investment committee work, capital strategy. We read the filings, not just the deck.

05

Thought leadership and convening

Policy forums, ministerial dialogues, academic convenings, hand-picked rather than open. In a field this new, whoever convenes first sets the roadmap.

How we work

01

We build, not just advise

A recommendation is where we start, not where we finish. When we leave, the work is already running.

02

We embed

We work inside our partners’ teams, on their timelines, in their culture, and we bring in specialists when the problem calls for them.

03

We are selective

We take on a small number of engagements, and we choose them on conviction. It’s the only way the first two promises stay honest.

Who we work with

Tell us
 where the gap is

We only take on a handful of engagements each year. If what you’re building doesn’t fit neatly into a category, that’s usually a good sign.