Media Releases

Students tackle healthcare challenge in Rotman/Johnson & Johnson Medical Companies case competition

February 14, 2013

TORONTO, ON – Teams of stu­dents gath­ered at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment on Feb­ru­ary 6 for the annu­al health­care case com­pe­ti­tion orga­nized by the School’s Health­care & Biotech­nol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion, an MBA stu­dent group. The com­pe­ti­tion, spon­sored by John­son & John­son Med­ical Com­pa­nies, attract­ed par­tic­i­pants from the Rot­man School’s Full Time, Morn­ing and Evening MBA pro­grams, MBA stu­dents from York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Schulich School of Busi­ness as well as stu­dents from U of T’s Temer­ty Temer­ty Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine and oth­er grad­u­ate stu­dents from U of T.

Dur­ing the day-long com­pe­ti­tion the stu­dent teams were required to rec­om­mend a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to solve a real-time busi­ness chal­lenge fac­ing Canada’s evolv­ing health­care sys­tem in front of pan­els of senior lead­ers from the health­care indus­try, gov­ern­ment, as well as Rot­man School fac­ul­ty.

Plac­ing first in the com­pe­ti­tion was a team from U of T’s Temer­ty Temer­ty Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine. Cale Zavitz, Justin Hall, Amin Bahubeshi and Sab­ri­na Nur­mo­hamed are all from the MD Class of 2015 who are also enrolled in the Fac­ul­ty’s Lead­er­ship Edu­ca­tion and Devel­op­ment pro­gram which sets the stan­dard for lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion and devel­op­ment for med­ical stu­dents by draw­ing on resources with­in U of T. In addi­tion to their med­ical stud­ies, stu­dents take cours­es in health man­age­ment and lead­er­ship as well as pub­lic pol­i­cy at the Rot­man School, the Insti­tute of Pol­i­cy Man­age­ment and Eval­u­a­tion and the School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Gov­er­nance.

A team from the Rot­man Full Time MBA pro­gram, with stu­dents Anton Blagov, Juliane Novak, Chetak Shah and Alex Yeo, all from the Class of 2014, placed sec­ond.

“Health care rep­re­sents a huge and grow­ing sec­tor in all indus­tri­al­ized economies and is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ser­vice and knowl­edge-ori­ent­ed focus of the 21st cen­tu­ry econ­o­my. How­ev­er, the sec­tor has sig­nif­i­cant man­age­ment chal­lenges that have not been ade­quate­ly addressed.” says Jacqui Stone, MBA’13, Pres­i­dent, Rot­man Health­care & Biotech­nol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion. “By orga­niz­ing this case com­pe­ti­tion, we’re hop­ing to make our own con­tri­bu­tion to address­ing some of these chal­lenges.”

“Rethink­ing the man­age­ment of health care con­tin­ues to be a crit­i­cal pri­or­i­ty requir­ing diverse think­ing and a high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive approach”, said Paul Bradley, Vice-Pres­i­dent, Strate­gic Affairs, John­son & John­son Med­ical Com­pa­nies Cana­da. “We believe that cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty for emerg­ing lead­ers to con­tribute inno­v­a­tive approach­es to this com­plex chal­lenge is an impor­tant exer­cise with valu­able out­comes.”

In addi­tion to the Health­care & Biotech­nol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion, an MBA stu­dent group, the Rot­man School offers a Major in Health Sec­tor Man­age­ment in the MBA pro­gram, var­ied Exec­u­tive Pro­grams for health-care pro­fes­sion­als, and a world-class research insti­tute, the Cen­tre for Health Sec­tor Strat­e­gy, head­ed by Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Gold­en.

A divi­sion of John­son & John­son Inc., John­son & John­son Med­ical Com­pa­nies mar­kets med­ical devices and diag­nos­tic solu­tions for use by health-care pro­fes­sion­als and hos­pi­tals in Cana­da.  Our prod­ucts include med­ical devices for min­i­mal­ly inva­sive and open sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures, devices for women’s health, infec­tion pre­ven­tion and con­trol, car­dio­vas­cu­lar and neu­rovas­cu­lar diag­nos­tics and treat­ment, breast implants for aug­men­ta­tion and recon­struc­tion and sur­gi­cal sinus treat­ment.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:
Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Phone 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool