This Is The World’s First B-School Dedicated To Healthcare Management

 

University College London East today (September 29) launched the world’s first business school dedicated to health and healthcare management. UCL Global Business School for Health will offer its MBA Health, along with other advanced degrees, welcoming its first cohort in September 2022.

Professor Nora Ann Colton has been appointed the school’s director. 

“It’s such a pleasure to get an opportunity in your career to be handed a concept, and to really turn it into something that’s actualized and can energize, but also to make such a difference to the world,” Colton says in announcing the launch of the new school. 

“I think this is where business schools will go and need to go .. We’ve got to be able to develop health professionals, but moreover health leaders. And we need leaders who can be system thinkers, innovators, problem solvers. But most importantly we need people who can break the barriers that often exist in health care between different professional groups, to really reinvent health care management.” 

Colton previously was the Joint Director of Education at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and UCL Pro-Vice Provost of Postgraduate Education.  

REIMAGINING GLOBAL HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT

At most top business schools, MBAs going to work in healthcare account for between 2% and 6% of graduates. Given the prominence in everyone’s lives of the biggest health crisis in generations, that may be changing. UCL wants to be at the forefront of a new movement in management eduction. The school aims “elevate the global impact of healthcare delivery and transform healthcare access, experience, and outcomes around the world by empowering healthcare management leaders of the future through high-quality education,” the school announced, which it will accomplish by “reimagining global healthcare management while unraveling health challenges from a business perspective.” 

As part of UCL East in London, the new school will offer Executive Education, Master’s programs such as Health Policy and Practice and an MSc in Digital Health and Entrepreneurship among other programs. The 12-month MBA Health will focus on real world business issues in the health industry. It costs £45,000 (about $60,500), and applications open in October. 

“We all must start and end with people. For patients to get the best service, we need talent, ambition and leadership throughout the entire system,” says Professor Graham Hart, Co-Director of UCL Health of the Public, who established the new business school. “That’s why UCL is the right place for the Global Business School for Health. We’re London’s global university, so our remit is health throughout the world, not just for the rich countries of the North.”

WORLD’S FIRST AND ONLY HEATHCARE B-SCHOOL

The school’s launch event September 29 included remarks from UCL President and Provost Dr. Michael Spence; Professor Paola Lettieri, director of UCL East; and Chris Outram, founder of OC&C Strategy Consultants, who first conceived of the idea of a dedicated health business school. 

A panel discussion, “Shifting the Health and Healthcare Landscape Calls for Reimagining Healthcare Management,” was moderated by Professor Ibrahim Abubakar, Dean of Faculty of Population Health Science at UCL. Speakers included: 

• Dr. Navina Evans, CEO of Health Education England
• Mark Brinell, chair and partner of Global Health Practice
• Dr. Linda Harris, OBE, CEO of Spectrum Community Health in London
• Lord Nigel Crisp, House of Lords

Outram is founder of OC&C Strategy Consultants which recruits from the top business schools from around the world. He first began to think about a dedicated healthcare business school about six years ago.

FILLING ‘A MASSIVE GAP IN THE MARKETPLACE’

“It seemed very strange to me that there were very complex and complicated industry sectors that had absolutely no attention paid by a business school, and being a generalist MBA would not necessarily help,” Outram says. 

Healthcare was one such industry. Outram recognized health care’s need for a dedicated program because (1) the industry is extraordinarily complex; (2) every country has its own approach to health care, and most find their approaches unsatisfactory; and, (3) economically, health are accounts for about 10% of the global GDP, and 18% of GDP in the United States.

That accounts for between $7 and $10 trillion per year, depending on the research study. 

“I was left scratching my head, as to why there was no business school in the world, frankly, that actually grappled with the complexities of these types of institutions,” Outram said. “There is a massive gap in the marketplace for a world class … global business school focused on health care. The market, frankly, is wide open and I’m delighted that UCL has decided to fill that particular gap.”

The timing, Outram concluded, couldn’t be better. First, “building on UCL’s great pedigree in health care, there is a huge global need for better leadership and management, as we have just demonstrated in the COVID-19 pandemic,” he says. “Secondly, many potential funders and foundations are intensely interested in health and improving healthcare generally, whether that’s the Gates Foundation, or if you’ve been reading the newspapers over the last couple of weeks, Amazon.”

Learn more about the UCL Global Business School for Health here. 

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