EMBA Specialism at WBS Looks to Healthcare Industry’s Future

Healthcare is the second specialism to be made available through Warwick Business School’s executive MBA program. 

“Half of the MBA will be on the healthcare industry and the other will be focused on general management,” says John Colley, associate dean for the MBA at Warwick Business School (WBS).

More specifically, healthcare-orientated courses on strategic leadership, digital innovation and managing service delivery will follow a roster of eight core courses. The program can either be taken from WBS’s main campus or from its floor in London’s Shard building. London, incidentally, is also the place where students can take the school’s EMBA specialization in finance. The school’s EMBA programs are generally taken part-time over the course of two years in London and three years on its main campus. 

Research institute to inform program at Warwick Business School

The healthcare focus is targeting clinicians and senior doctors who are searching for greater aptitude in taking on managerial positions as well as those in the pharmaceutical industry. “There seems to be an increasing demand from the healthcare industry for managers who have experience on the frontline,” Colley adds.

One of the program’s principal aims is to make its participants aware of the direction in which healthcare is going, and the opportunities therein. Warwick Business School will therefore be drawing on the expertise of its existing healthcare research institute, the Organising Healthcare Research Network (OHRN).

“We have more than 20 academics in OHRN working across the public and private healthcare sector and their research will feed into the new executive MBA, with many teaching on it as well,” Colley says.

Data analytics in the healthcare industry and student competitions

Something that seems central to the future of the healthcare industry is the role that will be played by data analytics and technology companies. One faculty member at OHRN, entrepreneurship and innovation professor, Eivor Oborn, notes how much has changed in the industry and how, for instance, multinational pharmaceutical and tech companies now look to work with hospitals and healthcare organizations: 

“Joining up data across organizations in healthcare, from GPs to hospitals, or even across countries is now a central issue not just for improving patient care but for health research.”

A recent example of using data in a healthcare context came with the Wharton School’s choice of subject for the student case competition part of its 2016 People Analytics Conference. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) provided the data to be analyzed with a view to improving the development and retention of its medical volunteers. To this challenge, a team of three MBAs from Cambridge Judge responded by focusing on improving the experience of voluntary doctors. This was done by showing how volunteers might be better matched to MSF missions, using information on volunteers’ skillsets and previous engagement as well as data concerning mission lengths and roles – efforts for which they were awarded second place.

The EMBA specialization launch at Warwick Business School comes in the same month as its own annual healthcare case competition, which starts tomorrow. With a focus on challenges for the healthcare industry that are brought on by ageing populations, competing teams of six from the likes of SDA Bocconi and reigning champions, Alliance Manchester Business School, will all contain at least three MBA students.