Healthcare Management Initiative

15 October 2025 - Optimal Staffing and Treatment for Collaborative Care of Diabetes and Depression - Jay Swaminathan, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

About 27% of patients with diabetes also suffer from depression, and the presence of co-morbid depression could increase the cost of care for diabetes by up to 100%. Several randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that physical and mental health are more likely to improve for diabetes patients suffering from depression when regular treatment for depression is provided in a primary care setting (called Collaborative Care). However, Collaborative Care requires additional resource utilization costs and a separate reimbursement model. When managing Collaborative Care, clinics must balance patient health outcomes with the program’s financial sustainability. Important  operational levers in Collaborative Care are allocating care managers’ time to patients based on their requirements and the care managers’ staffing level. This staffing and workload allocation influences the revenue, costs, and patient health outcomes. We present a novel Markov Dynamic Programming model that, unlike existing approaches, jointly optimizes both staffing levels and treatment policies for Collaborative Care programs and quantifies the costs and benefits of collaborative care. Mathematically, we model Collaborative Care management at the clinical level as an infinite-horizon Markov Dynamic Program. The objective is a weighted sum of total patient QALYs and the clinic profits. The model incorporates insurance payment, resource utilization costs, and disease progression of co-morbid diabetes and depression. We derive structural properties for the joint optimization of the staffing level and allocating care managers’ time to different patient categories. Using these structural properties, we develop a practical and easy-to-implement policy for staffing level and care managers’ time allocation that performs close to the optimal solution. We calibrate the model with data from a large academic medical center and show that our solutions can improve total QALYs and clinic profits compared to current practices. Our analysis also reveals key insights into payment models’ effects on Collaborative Care. Profit under the fixed-fee model responds non-monotonically to payment rate increases, highlighting complex financial dynamics. Fixed-fee models show a threshold behavior, with high-intensity treatments becoming optimal only above certain payment rates. This threshold varies based on the profit-QALY weight balance, and this threshold is lower under joint-optimization than treatment-only optimization.

24 September 2025 - Contracting Telemedicine: A game-theoretic consideration for NHS Advice & Guidance - Feryal Erhun, Cambridge Judge Business School

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) relies on general practitioners (GPs) as the first point of contact for patients for initial assessment and treatment. However, this gatekeeping in the referral process may be susceptible to diagnostic and referral errors, causing both over- and under-referrals. These inefficiencies, compounded by long outpatient waiting lists, strain traditional care models. To address such inefficiencies, the NHS introduced Advice & Guidance (A&G), a telemedicine service allowing GPs to consult hospital specialists electronically before making referral decisions. This optional pre-referral step aims to improve referral appropriateness and reduce unnecessary hospital visits. We investigate optimal incentive mechanisms to maximize the effectiveness of A&G in addressing referral inefficiencies. We develop a game-theoretic model to analyze the deployment of the A&G service under different contractual schemes involving three key stakeholders: the payer (service purchaser), the hospital (service provider), and the GPs (service users). Our analysis reveals the limitations of existing approaches, such as a hospital's voluntary participation, fee-for-service, and two-part tariffs in achieving system-wide efficiency. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a novel COst-sharing PErformance-based (COPE) contract that aligns incentives between the payer and the hospital to reach socially optimal outcomes. We extend this contract to a dynamic, multi-period setting by incorporating GP learning, and propose Dynamic COPE contracts to support sustained coordination over time.

12 June 2025 - Annual Healthcare Conference - Paris 

The INSEAD Healthcare Club hosted its Annual Healthcare Conference, where leading experts from across the healthcare ecosystem shared their insights on the next horizon for our healthcare systems — and what avenues should be considered to address the significant challenges our systems are facing.

28 May 2025 - Challenges in supply, market competition, and regulation of infant formula in the United States - Ravi Anupindi, University of Michigan

Infant formula is the primary or supplementary source of nutrition for many infants in the US. Consequently, disruptions to the supply of infant formula can have a severe impact on infants’ health and well-being. In late 2021 and early 2022, a recall of specific infant formula products, followed by a pause in production, resulted in a widespread, national shortage. As part of the HR 2617 of the FY2023 Omnibus Bill, Congress directed FDA to enter an agreement with the National Academies (NASEM) to study the challenges in supply, market competition, and regulation of infant formula in the United States.
The resulting NASEM consensus study report, released on July 25, 2024, explains policy and marketplace vulnerabilities that were exposed during the shortage, describes the extent to which actions taken by relevant stakeholders addressed these vulnerabilities, identifies remaining gaps in the system, and recommends actions to reduce the risk and lessen the effect of any future disruption to the infant formula supply chain.

17-19 February 2025 - Global Mental Health in Asia Symposium - Singapore 

Mental health issues are increasingly recognised as a critical component of overall health. However, in many parts of Asia, mental health awareness, support, and resources remain limited. By bridging these gaps, we can make a profound impact on individuals, families, and communities.

At GMH Asia 2025, we will focus on addressing the main mental health priorities for Asia, examining prevailing needs and identifying gaps in mental health services, exploring barriers and implementation challenges and exchanging best practices and key recommendations to collectively advance mental health.

2 April 2024 - Healthcare Reimagined: Is Innovation Moving Fast Enough in Healthcare? - Paris

The Health Economics Initiative of the Alliance Sorbonne Université (ASU) and the INSEAD Alumni Healthcare Club of France held their 2024 Healthcare Conference. The event took place on the Campus des Cordellliers of Sorbonne Université on April 2nd.

The conference theme revolved around the question: "Is innovation moving fast enough?" Participants delved into the profound impact of innovation on healthcare and deliberate on strategies to accelerate the pace of innovation and its adoption.

The focal point of the conference was a panel discussion featuring diverse and complementary perspectives, by our esteemed panelists:

David Sainiti, co-responsible du Numérique en Santé at the France Ministry of Health
Eric Thepaut, EMEA President, Boston Scientific
Jean-Christophe Dantonel, Managing Partner iBionext, former responsible for the Healthcare program at the Secrétariat Général pour l’Investissement
Laurent van Lerberghe, Investor Digital Health, former Chief Strategy Officer at Sanofi
Nathalie Coutinet, Health Economist and Professor at l’Université Sorbonne aris Associate Professor in Economic Sciences at Sorbonne University

The panel was moderated by Thomas London, partner at McKinsey&Company and lead on their Healthcare and Life Sciences Practices in France.

Introductory remarks were led by Timothy Van Zandt, Professor of Economics at INSEAD and Director of the Health Economics Initiative at ASU, and by Jian-Sheng Sun, Professor at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and co-pilote of the Approche Globale de la Santé within SOUND, an ASU project for bridging academia and society.

June 2023 - Business and Society Summit - Fontainebleau

Stephen Chick and Ridhima Aggarwal hosted a session on the role of business model innovation in transforming health systems in ways to deliver health value more effectively, and that parts that innovators, care delivery, and pharma/medtech contribute and the improvement of care quality and access to underserved populations. The session included a virtual reality journey to a Tanzanian clinic that is part of a collaboration with MBA students, Master Strategist Day, and NGO MiracleFeet.

May 2023 - Scaling innovation in genetics and precision medicine

The session focused on latest trends in genetics and precision medicine, bringing together leading experts to discuss validation and operational use of technology inventions in this field. Our panelists, Julien Rey (MBA’14J); Co-Founder of FBB Biomed, Francois Paillier, CEO & Co-Founder CircaGene and Kostas Theofilatos, Co-Founder and CTO InSyBio, explored a range of topics, including customer discovery and payer sequencing and strategies for ensuring equitable access to these advancements without depleting resources. The discussion was moderated by Stephen Chick, Professor of Technology and Operations Management, INSEAD and Director of the INSEAD Healthcare Management Initiative.

March 2023 - The Health Innovation Network, King’s Health Partners, and INSEAD Healthcare Management Initiative: Innovation in the NHS and beyond

Ridhima Aggarwal, Director of HMI, spoke on the topic of Health system transformation - INSEAD Healthcare Management Initiative experience.

January 2023 - Achieving the Goal of Universal Health Coverage by 2030: Successes and Challenges from Emerging Market Countries

A panel discussion on the topic of universal health coverage at the SDG Tent in Davos focused was on successes and challenges of achieving universal health by 2030 in emerging market countries, and speakers included senior experts from government and ministries of health from Indonesia, India, and Kenya along with a senior executive from the sustainability division at Philips.

The MBA Healthcare Club brings together MBA participants who wish to start a career in the healthcare industry, those who are seeking to return to the healthcare industry after their MBA, or to simply want to learn more about this industry sector.

The two main goals of the club are to provide information and raise awareness about the healthcare sector for INSEAD MBA participants, and to help MBA participants prepare for a career in this industry.

The healthcare club brings together MBA participants who are interested in the healthcare industry, providing opportunities to share their experiences, to network with industry and other participants, and to meet with various career service representatives. The club also hosts conferences and seminars with industry speakers from pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, healthcare services and delivery, as well as consulting, banking and private equity.

The INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Network represents the interests of the approximately 2000 alumni working in the healthcare industry and associated fields. It's mission is to encourage networking and discussion on healthcare topics across geographic boundaries and industry sub-sectors.

INSEAD healthcare alumni are active in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, diagnostics, medical devices and healthcare services, as well as healthcare-focused consulting, banking and private equity. They work on six continents and include the CEOs of more than 50 healthcare companies.

The network was founded in 2006 and is run by a committee of alumni. It works closely with national healthcare alumni groups in several countries as well as INSEAD's Healthcare Management Initiative. The network also organizes an international conference, the INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Summit. Each year, over 150 alumni and industry leaders gather to discuss trends in the business of healthcare and to take part in what has become a leading industry networking event. 

There are active INSEAD Healthcare alumni in alumni country groups including Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom and others. 

Alumni participate actively as volunteers, interviewing candidates, serving on governing boards, national alumni associations and reunion committees, and organising events. A majority are members of the INSEAD Alumni Association and its 42 national alumni associations, and return for their alumni reunions on campus. Over 1000 alumni volunteers worldwide serve in various capacities on national alumni association committees, and help to organise reunions and international speaking events as well as interviewing MBA candidates in their home countries.

Click here to join the INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Network group on LinkedIn.

Alumni from the following Johnson & Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust programmes may join our LinkedIn alumni group - INSEAD Health Leadership & Innovation - to connect and participate in discussions with fellow alumni.

Middle East Health Leadership Programme (MEHLP)

Innovating Health for Tomorrow (IHT)

Strategic Innovation for Community Health (STICH)