Warwick Launches Executive MBA In Healthcare

Healthcare professionals can improve their managerial skills with Warwick Business School’s new Executive MBA with Healthcare specialization.

Clinicians, senior doctors, senior management and those in the pharmaceutical industry can learn how strategic leadership works in healthcare, find out about the emerging healthtech industry and discover how to manage health service delivery on the specially designed Executive MBA (part-time course for working professionals).

Warwick Business School is ranked in the top one per cent of business schools in the world, while its Executive MBA is rated third in the UK and in the global top 25 by the Financial Times.

John Colley, Associate Dean for the MBA, said: “We already have quite a few clinicians and consultants enrolled on the MBA or who have completed it. There seems to be an increasing demand from the healthcare industry for managers who have experience on the frontline.

“There is a great deal of innovation happening in the healthcare sector with new technologies and governments around the world looking for more efficient methods of delivering a health service. The pharma sector is also tremendously competitive and an MBA specialising in healthcare will give people the managerial and strategic skills to progress their careers quickly.

“For doctors and clinicians, they are being promoted into managerial positions often without the skills or knowledge base to run an organisation. This MBA will help them develop these skills and to think strategically. Half of the MBA will be on the healthcare industry and the other will be focused on general management.”

The MBA will examine the future of healthcare and how big data analytics and technology companies will play an increasingly important role in the industry. WBS, which holds an annual Healthcare Case Challenge for postgraduate students across Europe, has strong links with healthcare organisations and leaders who, working with our academics, will bring ‘real-life’ teaching to these new modules.

The school’s Organising Healthcare Research Network (OHRN) has been active for more than 20 years and has fostered research partnerships with trusts and hospitals, including a significant role in the Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care West Midlands (CLAHRC West Midlands), a £31 million five-year initiative funded mainly by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR).  

OHRN, which produced the classic study of strategic management in healthcare Shaping Strategic Change, brings together staff from fields as diverse as: patient safety; e-health; markets, choice and consumerism; financial incentives; IT and telehealth; knowledge mobilisation and innovation; leadership; workforce development; operations management; and social networks.

“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,” said Professor Colley. “We also have a strong working relationship with Warwick Medical School, with our faculty working together in the Institute of Healthcare Leadership.

“While our Behavioural Science, which is the biggest in Europe, is researching innovative ways to transform services and save the NHS millions of pounds. We have funding from the likes of the Department of Health, MacMillan Cancer, the NIHR and the Health Foundation, all using our expertise that we can now deliver to students on the Executive MBA with Healthcare Specialism.”

The course will have eight core modules, which will include units on leadership, innovation and creativity, followed by three specialist modules on Strategic Leadership in Healthcare, Digital Innovation in the Healthcare Industry and Managing Service Delivery in Healthcare.

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Eivor Oborn, Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation in OHRN, says students will learn about the wider healthcare ecosystem and the way data is shaping collaborations and innovation.

“Strategy is about having a vision and moving forward,” said Professor Oborn, who has worked alongside Lord Darzi developing surgical technology. “To do this managers need to see the wider picture and the possibility for synergies and partnerships with other organisations. The landscape is very different from just 20 years ago with pharma and global technology companies looking to work with hospitals and healthcare organisations.

“Joining up data across organisations 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.

“The opening up of data will lead to more innovation in healthcare and the potential for new treatments and finding efficiencies using that data – digital technology is an exciting new avenue.”

Participants on the course will also undertake a major project for a healthcare organisation, possibly their own, supervised by a WBS academic.