note: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FRIDAY NOVEMBER 9TH. Other updates: our 5-minute video intro, student FAQ, flyer for students, and student application.

GlobalHealth Lab is a graduate-level class at MIT Sloan School of Management that goes beyond traditional boundaries by taking on practical challenges at the front lines of healthcare delivery

GlobalHealth Lab blends classroom learning and carefully designed action-based field projects that are shaped by our partners over the months leading up to the class. Once the semester starts, teams of four MIT MBA or PhD students each partner with an organization on the front lines of care delivery. They collaborate over the course of several months, including an intensive period on site (in Spring 2012, teams were in South Africa, Uganda, India, and Kenya for the second half of March). Students and their partners collaborate on a customized action learning project designed to address factors that limit the enterprise’s delivery of health care to the people who most need it. With MIT faculty, domain experts, the leaders and staff in the partner enterprise, and other stakeholders, students put their management skills to work in a variety of ways. They begin by refining plans, conducting research, developing topical briefings, and planning their field work to make the most of every day they are on the ground. Their task is to bring to bear the best of their MBA toolkit, aiming to deliver a sustained improvement for each host organization by the end of the classroom and field-based components of the course.

The intensive on-site group project puts students to work inside the enterprise alongside its staff while they live and participate in the community. In the third segment of the course, we return to the classroom to distill what we learned in the field and to draw on the thought leadership abundant in the MIT community to reflect on our experiences and to define needs in the emerging field of global health delivery studies.

Our aspiration is for projects to go beyond offering observations or even advice. We aim to enable joint action projects that could deliver lasting improvements by initiating a systematic effort to tackle a pressing constraint or to make the most of an existing opportunity. Our thinking is that by aiming is to get as close as possible to implementation, we offer students the most valuable learning experience and also improve our odds of delivering something of value to the partners. Not only have we made some great new friends in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, but we also now see the potential for an ongoing dialog about the value of management tools and business thinking in health care delivery. The projects have led to multi-year relationships with leaders in healthcare, industry, and the social sector across our partner settings and with MIT alumni in a variety of industries.

Our impact assessment currently underway is documenting the lasting effect of our first 36 projects, some one and two years after the initial work. Stay tuned for more!

GlobalHealth.Lab13 Overview with FAQs for students 12.10.19

STUDENTS: sign up for our email list HERE. Click here for our online application.

Past projects map

Project focus areas

Thank you for your interest in GlobalHealth Lab, the MIT project class that pairs teams of experienced MBA and PhD students with organizations on the front lines of health care delivery in resource-limited settings. Each project is designed to address a pressing organizational or business need identified by a host organization, and the three-month MIT Spring course is built around the projects. Past projects have benefited our partnering host organizations and enabled an incredible learning experience for MIT students. We’re embarking on our fifth set of projects this year with our new name, GlobalHealth Lab (this course was previously called G-Lab GHD and ghdLAB).

Timeline:  Applications are due by 2 November, 2012, and by early December you’ll know if the project is selected. Your student team would make initial contact with you soon after. The intensive portion of the projects will run from early February to late April 2013. Each student team works full-time with its partnering hosts organization–with your staff, at your site–for the last two weeks of March 2013.

Ready to go?  If you know you want to apply, the first step is to download and review the Note to prospective partners along with the Timeline.  Then download and answer the Initial check and Part One questionnaire, and send back to us. If your project looks to be a good fit for our class, we will contact you with a request to submit Part Two.

Explore if your needs may fit with GlobalHealth Lab:  If you’re not sure whether your potential needs would fit with GlobalHealth Lab, please consider the following questions.

Begin by keeping your key needs in mind: What aspects of your organization’s operations, strategy, or marketing create your biggest challenges or opportunities?

Consider if your answers to this question fits with the GlobalHealth Lab focal areas. Our past experience and conversations with several hundred leaders and staff reveal that many health delivery organizations, whether small or large, for-profit or not, face unmet needs in five broad areas that connect to our teaching and research at MIT Sloan School of Management. By focusing on these themes we enable better learning for the students and help create more valuable contributions for the hosts. This year, we seek projects that address enterprise-level issues that fit into these focal areas:

• Improving operations, internal processes, and logistics
• Strategy setting and helping the organization develop as thought leader in the field
• Technology and software adoption decisions
• Patient demand and marketing               
• Analyzing finance and new business models for revenue generation

Another important note: We seek partners who are primarily serving the poor and the underserved in resource-limited setting.

If you feel that your potential project lines up with these considerations, and your location is in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Bangladesh or India, we want to take the next step!

Downloads:

• Introducing GlobalHealth Lab for potential partners (1 page)
• Note to potential partners (provides more information about partnering with GlobalHealth Lab)
• Timeline for the application process and the projects
• GlobalHealth Lab 2012-13 Application Part 1 for potential partners (due 2 November 2012, but earlier is always better!) Application Part Two is by request only, after potential partners have received feedback for part one.

For more information

Contact us by email: global.health.lab ‘at’ mit.edu

Learn about previous projects here. 
Learn about our focus areas here or download the description of them.

Thank you for your interest. We look forward to hearing from you and are very glad to have the opportunity to work in this important area!

The GlobalHealth Lab Team

Learn about why ghdLAB blends classroom learning and action-based field projects. MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Anjali Sastry, students, and field partners explain what they’ve gained from taking on practical health care management and delivery challenges in Africa and India.

Want to learn more?
Contact course team: biz4globalhealth at mit.edu
Find great content from past offerings of the class.

GlobalHealth Lab partners with leading organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to enable, inform, and learn from their efforts to deliver more or better healthcare to those in greatest need. In 2012, an assessment of our first 36 field projects showed that GlobalHealth Lab collaborations have been of value to partnering organizations in a variety of ways. From the data, we identified five focal areas of greatest potential impact in which we could build on our track record of success: Improving operations, internal processes, and logistics; setting strategy and enabling the organization to develop as a thought leader in the field; supporting technology and software adoption decisions; understanding patient demand and marketing; and analyzing finances along with revenue generation opportunities.

The domains of operations, strategy, technology, marketing, and finance and revenue are well aligned with MIT Sloan academic course content and faculty expertise, as well as student experience and interest. Innovation in all five domains is also much sought by managers and leaders of healthcare organizations across a vast range of settings. This briefing provides an introduction to how GlobalHealth Lab projects address potential challenges and opportunities in each area.

Operations
Improving operations, internal processes, and logistics

We work with organizations to analyze and refine daily operations and processes in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare delivery. Projects may focus on product logistics, patient flow, or utilization of personnel and assets.

In 2011 our students worked with loveLife in South Africa to improve the logistics of distributing key materials to 900 sites by assessing the current system, seeking potential partners that would increase product circulation and visibility, and making recommendations for changes in distribution methods.

A further illustration comes from our 2010 project with urban hospital-based Muthaiga Pediatrics Clinic in Kenya. The student team built organizational charts, job descriptions, process flow charts, forms, and tools in order to streamline operational processes and minimize wait time. Our on-line capsule guide presents a detailed description of the project to convey the steps taken by students to design, plan, execute, and get feedback on their work. It also presents interim and final work products along with results that followed the student project. See this project’s overview, which also provides an excellent example of how GlobalHealth Lab student projects typically proceed.

Strategy
Setting strategy and helping the organization develop as a leader in its field

We work with our partners to consider how each organization’s strategy enables its mission, values, and goals. Some of our projects evaluate new opportunities or shifts in competitive or funding environments; others address questions about expanding scope, volume, or geographic range of services. A related set of projects aim to identify and document strengths and capabilities, past successes, and lessons learned in order to help the organization’s leaders present their organization to others (e.g. ministries of health, future partners, funders) and grow to be thought leaders in their field.

In 2009 our students worked with Kyetume Community Based Health Care Programme, which aims to influence health behavior and provide services for underserved rural communities in Uganda. The students helped Kyetume reframe its strategic direction by measuring and analyzing key performance indicators, conducting staff and stakeholder interviews, and benchmarking to reformulate the organization’s mission statement and strategic plan.

Another 2009 project took on strategy questions with a firm that operated innovative contracts for HIV prevention in Cape Town, South Africa. Students worked with the leadership of Careworks HIV Managed Care Solutions to examine how the company could leverage its experience, existing data sets, and ability to collect, explore, and analyze unique HIV-linked data relationships, ultimately creating a data management and marketing plan. Check back soon for a link to a more extensive overview of this project.

Technology
Technology and software adoption decisions

We work with organizations to research, select, and plan for new technologies that fit their needs, looking at requirements, utility, features, and implementation. We have examined electronic medical records systems, diagnostic technologies for clinics, and other tools and technologies.

In 2012 our students worked with Chebaiywa Health Center, a small mission-based health clinic serving rural communities in Kenya’s Rift Valley, to assess a plan to improve the quality of patient care and better track patients by implementing an electronic medical system. After observing and interviewing staff and creating and analyzing process maps, the student team helped plan the organization’s move from their current lack of medical records to a paper-based system, as a step towards adopting an electronic OpenMRS medical records system.

Another 2012 project offers a further example. LifeSpring Hospitals, a for-profit chain of low-cost hospitals that provides maternal care to low-income patients in Hyderabad, India, sought input on the potential of mobile-phone based tools. The MIT student team piloted and assessed a new application to be used in combination with a nurse outreach program and to create an implementation plan for the technology’s adoption. Check back soon for a link a more detailed overview of this project.

Marketing
Understanding patient demand and marketing

We work with organizations to identify how their services or products are perceived and to understand how patients, beneficiaries, or clients make decisions and value the services they are offered. For some projects, we assess utilization rates. In other cases, we help create marketing or other materials to increase demand for services.

In 2011 our students worked in South Africa with Unjani, a division of RTT, Africa’s largest privately-owned distribution company, to evaluate the viability of two new offerings that would increase the availability of healthcare in selected townships. Health-in-a-Homestore would offer over-the-counter pharmaceuticals in local stores, and Clinic-in-a-Box would provide fee-based basic primary healthcare services in a rapidly deployable single-unit clinic. The team analyzed pilot data, explored funding mechanisms, and examined demand generation to come up with short-term tactics to increase the volume of patients to the clinic and long-term strategies for the organization’s growth.

A 2011 project addressed marketing and patient demand for a clinic in Kenya. Our students worked with Carolina for Kibera, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting poverty and promoting youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation in Kibera, East Africa’s largest slum. The student team’s market research included interviewing some eighty patients and community members to assess knowledge and opinion of the organization’s clinic and its services. They then collaborated with CFK staff and its cadre of peer youth educators to develop marketing materials designed to inform and attract more people. Check back soon for a link to this project’s overview.

Finance and revenue
Financial analysis and new business models

To improve financial sustainability, we work with partner organizations to assess their finances, accounting, and business models. In other cases, our work with organizations examines their prospects for new revenue generation, including via novel lines of business. For new products and services targeting low-resource settings, we have conducted market entry studies in a variety of countries.

In 2009 our students worked with Centre for Infectious Diseases Research Zambia, a major government partner for HIV service expansion and clinical research headquartered in Lusaka, to increase revenue streams by assessing current utilization of laboratory capacity and designing a program to offer fee-based laboratory services to nearby institutions to take advantage of gaps in their own laboratory’s usage of capital-intensive equipment.

In 2011, our students first worked with Daktari Diagnostics, a Boston-based company that commercializes low-cost, rugged health diagnostics. This project assessed the Uganda market and devised firm entry strategies for a new CD4 counter that would enable HIV service provision to be deployed more widely and cost-effectively. Check back soon for a link to this project’s overview.

General management assessment and recommendations

Although we always aim to develop well-defined projects, sometimes a partner organization is better served by a carefully specified general project that addresses overall management needs by taking an inventory of the organization’s capabilities and systems and offering advice designed to improve how the organization is managed, uses its resources, and addresses needs.

In 2010 our students worked with Kampala Family Clinic, a full-service clinic serving seven thousand patients in urban Uganda. The clinic’s founders hoped to grow significantly. The MIT team helped them to set a strategic direction by examining the clinic’s operations, financial position, and IT infrastructure and by conducting market research to find the best directions and methods for growth.

Click here to download this article in pdf form.

Want a little background on what we do? Here’s our introducing GlobalHealth Lab for potential partners. Want to know more about projects we’ve completed? Read about our past projects and check out this map of places we’ve worked. Interested in partnering with us? Apply to host one of next set of projects for 2012-2013.

Join this year’s ghdLAB students for a lively, interactive poster session to
learn about their experience on the front lines of global health delivery.

By Anjali Sastry and Rebecca Weintraub

In 2007, we met Dr Jim Yong Kim as he gathered faculty across Harvard and MIT to envision a new field of study in Global Health Delivery. Dr Kim already had an astounding record to build on: a practicing physician and medical anthropologist, he’d put his smarts to practical use as an early partner of Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Todd McCormack, and Thomas White in building and then continuing to lead and shape the much-admired Partners In Health. Through the years, he has been an inspiring leader, visionary strategist, and highly effective manager who oversaw the growth and development of PIH. An early and enduring insight from PIH’s hard-won experience was that healthcare delivery could only generate value when accompanied by critical, targeted investments in human resource development, infrastructure, and the diffusion of knowledge.

Dr Kim studied and designed health care delivery, always in connection with economic development and increasing equity. With his colleagues at PIH, Dr Kim provided care for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in the poorest neighborhoods in Peru, then took the evidence of its effectiveness to policy-makers, industry, and the global community. The ensuing international response drove down costs and greatly increased access to service delivery.

Dr. Kim then accomplished the impossible at the World Health Organization: this time it was via an ambitious global campaign to increase access to HIV/AIDS treatment. Capitalizing on a management insight–that stretch goals, such as rapidly getting 3 million people onto previously unavailable AIDS treatment–Dr. Kim led a WHO campaign that reached his goal by 2007. The stretch goal served its purpose excellently; as the Guardian‘s Sarah Boseley recently pointed out, now the number of people on treatment is closing in on 7 million.

After Dr Kim returned to Harvard,  MIT Sloan School of Management invited him to lecture in its Dean’s Innovative Leader Series. As his talk on bridging the health delivery gap made clear, Dr Kim had management and leadership lessons to offer. The conversation that day inspired MIT Sloan to create ghdLAB, an ongoing effort that pairs academic teaching and research with field work aimed at implementation. Working alongside the leaders and managers of organizations at the front lines of healthcare delivery, ghdLAB takes on the practical management challenges that most limit enterprises’ ability to deliver more and better healthcare. This work has been addressing the implementation gap that Dr. Kim described so compellingly and is demonstrating why management tools, leadership qualities, and systems thinking are the necessary complements to medical knowledge and financial investment. This sets the agenda for our own research into healthcare delivery.

The Global Heath Delivery Project was cofounded by Dr Kim and Harvard Business School’s Professor Michael Porter. At its core is a new vision for sharing learning and advancing practice by creating Harvard Business School style case studies to train the next generation of managers in global health delivery. Public goods are being created as implementers seek counsel from experts via GHDonline.org‘s online virtual professional communities. To take these ideas further, in his three years as president of Dartmouth Dr Kim has articulated his vision of a new science of healthcare delivery. Today a growing number of innovative efforts are taking on his call for a rigorous and interdisciplinary new field of study and practice.

Over the years, we’ve seen Dr Kim at work as leader and strategist, marshaling creativity, ideas, skills, and knowledge in business, economics, and development in order to deliver–more effectively than ever before–needed services, goods, and knowledge to communities that are too often ignored. Now that he’s nominated to the presidency of the World Bank, we agree with others: it’s an inspired choice. Dr Kim has delivered results, and he’s done so in innovative, effective, and collaborative new ways. If so much has been accomplished in healthcare delivery, there is much more that can be done when its lessons are applied to poverty reduction and development.

Anjali Sastry, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management where she directs ghdLAB; she is also Lecturer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Rebecca Weintraub, MD, is the Executive Director of the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University and an Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Global Health Equity.

Dateline: March 2012
Location: Hyderabad, India
by Kate Krontiris and Lina Sayed

Outreach workers use a paper-based system; LifeSpring wonders if they should move to digital

Kate Krontiris is a graduate student of public policy and business at the Harvard Kennedy School and the MIT Sloan School of Management.  Lina Sayed is a second-year MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  They are students of Global Health Delivery, travelling to Hyderabad, India for a project on maternal and child health.

There are 51 babies born each minute in India.  Home to 1.2 billion people, the country is the second largest (by population) in the world.  As you can imagine, its maternal and child health needs are tremendous — and only growing.

Zoom in a bit to Hyderabad, a large city located in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.  Known as India’s tech and bio-pharmaceutical center, the city exemplifies what has driven India’s economic success over the past few decades.  Microsoft’s second largest research and development facility outside the US is located here, for example.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, however, the government of India currently only spends about 1% of its GDP on healthcare – an underinvestment that has led to a public hospital ecosystem lacking basic medicine, equipment, and capacity.  The Indian government has recently announced its intention to more than double that budget allocation; skeptics note that progress toward that goal is not as aggressive as necessary.

This is where LifeSpring Hospitals come in.  A chain of private, non-profit maternal hospitals, LifeSpring offers high-quality, reasonably priced pre-natal and birthing services to low-income moms-to-be. Their community health workers maintain a serious outreach schedule, making regular visits to customers’ homes to inform pregnant mothers about the services available to them and to encourage them to make healthcare choices that will promote a healthy birth.  Right now, these workers keep track of their visits using a paper-based list, since they want to maintain information about who they have visited, what their health conditions are, and whether they actually make it into a LifeSpring facility.

In a city alternately called “Cyberbad,” the question is: might there be a more efficient and helpful way of tracking this information, perhaps using basic mobile phone technology?

This is the question that LifeSpring has posed to our team.  We make no claim to know the answer, but we are equipped with some process tools to help surface key decision points.  In our first few days in Hyderabad, we will be walking alongside the outreach workers as they make their visits, understanding what their needs are and observing their use of technology.  We look forward to interviewing a variety of other stakeholders in this mobile health ecosystem: expectant moms, hospital IT staff, administrative management, and even product and program managers at large technology multinationals.

Neither of us has been to Hyderabad, so we are excited to explore its many facets and to meet our collaborators at LifeSpring Hospitals.  Stay tuned for more updates!