Meet our new faculty: Dan Zeltzer

UCBPH: Where did you live and work previously?

Dan Zeltzer, PhD: I completed my PhD in Economics at Princeton, then was a faculty member at the School of Economics at Tel Aviv University, and most recently spent two years as a visiting Koret Scholar at Stanford.

What are you currently working on?

My research studies how digital health technologies, such as telemedicine, devices, and AI, transform care delivery at both individual and system levels. A core focus is understanding how new technologies can augment and expand the reach of human expertise in healthcare.

In recent work, I studied the impacts of telemedicine expansion and remote examination devices on care cost and quality, and compared AI and physician diagnostic recommendations, revealing where AI excels and where it falls short. New technologies raise critical questions about design, adoption, and regulation: How do we best route patients? How do we make AI genuinely useful to clinicians? How can we redesign organizational workflows to improve outcomes? What technologies will get adopted? What oversight mechanisms ensure safety without stifling innovation?

I’m studying these questions across clinical contexts, ranging from preventive to acute and chronic care, and in diverse settings from well-resourced US health systems to resource-constrained ones in Sub-Saharan Africa, where new technologies have tremendous potential to expand access.

As an applied microeconomist, I use causal inference methods to analyze large-scale healthcare databases retrospectively. As digital technologies evolve rapidly, I’m also developing prospective evaluations in partnership with healthcare organizations and technology developers to inform evidence-based policy.

What do you hope to accomplish at UC Berkeley School of Public Health?

I plan to establish a lab that collaborates with healthcare organizations, technologists, and government to study the beneficial adoption and implementation of new digital technologies in healthcare. We’re in a transformational period that will see fundamental changes in healthcare organizations and processes. I believe academics have an important role in benchmarking progress and gathering rigorous early evidence on what works. Berkeley, with its exceptional students and faculty, proximity to the global tech hub, and spirit of radical innovation, is the ideal place for this work. I’m excited for the years ahead!