Carey Business School Dean Alex Triantis On The Business Of Health

Byrne: Historically, healthcare was not a major recruiter of business school talent. So many business schools haven’t focused on this part of the economy.

Triantis: I think that trend is starting to change. We are seeing a number of business schools moving more into this space. But with full-time MBA programs, the focus was on more traditional industries outside of the health care sector. Maybe that sector wasn’t perceived as moving rapidly enough. Folks were going into consulting and finance. But now many of the companies that recruit MBAs understand that there is a lot of specialization in the healthcare industry. It is an industry that has been slow to disrupt but that is what now makes it really exciting. To take what we have learned in other industries and apply it in health despite regulatory differences will have a real impact on the sector.

Byrne: It really is ripe for disruption and more MBA graduates are realizing that potential. After finance, consulting and technology, the business of health is now the first most important career sector for MBAs, even more important than consumer products.

Triantis: If you look at the type of jobs that our MBAs are able to get, many of them are with hospitals and health systems in senior management roles but many of them are working as product managers in pharma and medical devices. Many of them are in strategy jobs. Many of these companies have introduced leadership development programs. A lot of those jobs that may not have existed in t he past have opened up. We are seeing really exciting job opportunities for our students as they graduate.

Byrne: Core to your strategy is leveraging the strengths of the overall university. You’ve clearly done that with all the dual degree programs you have. But how else are you leveraging the expertise of faculty in different schools and departments at Johns Hopkins?

Triantis: The number one way which draws a lot of students to the Carey Business School is experiential learning. If you are an entrepreneur, you can work with Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures on commercialization. All of our students in the full-time MBA are involved in projects where they do design work as well as commercialization work of how to take a project to market for interesting applications in the health space. One of the exciting things recently announced by Johns Hopkins is a huge investment in artificial intelligence. People are talking about AI in every single industry but in health care in particular there are just some stunning application areas. The engineering school is hiring 110 data science and AI specialists which will increase the size of the school by 50%. We are working very closely with them because we have many faculty working in the AI space. The students have an opportunity with the School of Medicine with a software design competition called Hexsite. We have all sorts of consulting projects we did. So we have been very deliberate in designing experiences that take advantage of the whole ecosystem across the university.

Byrne: As a relatively young business school which only opened its doors in 2007, how does your newness impact your approach to innovation?

Triantis: We haven’t been focused on the silos. As schools grow, they tended in the past to develop departments of finance and accounting and so on. We really promote and create inter-disciplinary research. The modern business school is focused on addressing really complex problems that require you to integrate functional areas. Our faculty do that and our students learn that this is the way they are going to address problems. Having that nimble organization where we can easily add in a course based on student needs makes a difference. We’re not saying that every department gets two courses in the curriculum. We ask what do our students need? They need a course in AI and we put it in the full-time MBA program as we did three or four years ago. And this really helps students understand and become comfortable with what is going on with AI. 

Byrne: You aren’t burdened by decades of investment and tradition with faculty deeply entrenched in their disciplines. So you were able to pull out a blank sheet and build a modern business school. Not many schools are in that position.

Triantis: We have taken advantage of this and have had a blank slate in terms of building centers. We now have a Hopkins Business of Health initiative  which is about 120 faculty, only about 25 or 30 from the Carey Business School. That gives you a sense that there are a lot of folks elsewhere in the Hopkins ecosystem who are very interested in the business of health. They work together on policy and one of the reasons we have the Bloomberg Center in D.C. is that the university is making a big investment in policy. It just announced a new School of Government and Policy that will be in the center here in D.C. Another example is the Center for Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence. It is focusing in on the technology and innovation piece and how it is impacting health. There are tentacles across the entire university. Our students are very involved in these. We make sure they meet the faculty in their areas of interest. Every center is designed with the students in mind.

Byrne: Alex, can you share a couple of examples of students who have used your programs to transition into successful careers in the business of health?

Triantis: Sure. One is actually a former NFL star who came to class with his Super Bowl ring on and was very interested in well being and wanted to develop an app to help individuals with their training and fitness schedules. It was done with NASA technology. He licensed that technology and leveraged it into a going concern which is doing quite well.

Another one is a former Marine who came and did not have a background in health but had a passion to help people. He found this technology at Hopkins for a simple swab two look for biomarkers for esophageal cancer. He started his own company. There are a lot of examples of startups out of the Carey Business School with Hopkins IP.

Byrne: Many young people who choose a business school may not know that they can benefit from an ecosystem that develops a lot of intellectual property that can be leveraged into a business.. 

It’s not only Carey going out to various parts of the ecosystem looking for partnerships. We very often have them coming to us. Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures comes to us and says we need your students. We want to grow companies here in the area, we’ve got a lot of IP and we don’t know what can be commercialized successfully or not. Let your students come in here and be part of our Commercialization Academy, learn about the process and have this ability to start companies as well.

Byrne:  So we’ve covered the ways you have leveraged the university strengths and experiential learning, how else are your MBA programs different from others in the market?

Triantis: As you know, the full-time MBA has two tracks: the one in health care, technology and innovation and the other in applying business analytics. But The Flex-MBA is very different. It is for working professionals. The average age is closer to 30, rather than 25 or 26 in the full-time program. It has ten different specializations. I was in Chicago with our alumni recently and ran into a student who had just graduated. He was interested in going into health care finance. So he took the healthcare, innovation and technology specialization, an investment specialization and an entrepreneurship specialization and was able to build something that was very customized for what he needed. Most of our students are taking the courses online. Most of our students are not here in the Baltimore area. They are elsewhere nationally and internationally. You can do it fully online but if you want to come in for residencies, and in particular on weekends, do global study courses or be involved in case competitors, you have access to all of that as well. In fact, our full time MBA students and flex students are often together on teams.

Byrne: How long is the Flex program?

Triantis: We allow a fair bit of flexibility in terms of length as well, up to six years. Some of our students complete it as quickly as a year and one-half and the average is about two and one-half years. We have a number of physicians and nurses and others as well who want to pace it out a bit. We have three intakes in late August, January and in May. We keep adding on layers of flexibility.

Byrne: That level of flexibility is also apparent in your Master’s in Healthcare management program where you also have in-person and online options.. 

Triantis:While we’ve talked a lot about the MBA, we find that Some students are looking for a shorter option. You can do the MS in Healthcare Management in one year.  Some are doing a gap year before going to medical school for their MD to learn more about the health care system.  We get a lot of international students who are physicians trying to learn more about our health system in the U..S. and innovation in health care. In the part-time, in-person  program, we get a lot of people from all walks of life, from those involved in policy wanting to learn about the regulation of healthcare to physicians as well. And you can do the part-time program in one to two years. 

Byrne:  Alex, thanks very much chatting with us about the business of health.

 

 

 

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