Overview
The Centre supports PhD students whose research addresses challenges in our key research areas of health service delivery, pharmaceutical/med-tech industry, and healthcare in emerging economies.
Our PhD students are enrolled on Cambridge Judge Business School’s doctoral programme and trained for an academic career in a leading business school. They use the challenges of healthcare as the context for their research but, to be attractive to top business schools, they develop their research within a chosen academic field represented in a business school. Typical fields include organisational behaviour, strategy and innovation, information systems, management science and operations, and applied psychology.
Cambridge Judge PhD recruitment
PhD students are generally recruited from Cambridge Judge Business School’s research MPhils, specifically the MPhil in Innovation, Strategy & Organisation and the MPhil in Strategy, Marketing & Operations. Students with exceptional research-led masters-level qualifications from other leading universities may be considered for direct entry to the PhD programme.
The Centre will work with Cambridge Judge Business School and the University of Cambridge to offer a full funding package for the duration of the PhD.
Current PhD students
Harshita Kajaria
PhD Candidate, Cambridge Judge Business School
Tom Pape
PhD Candidate, Cambridge Judge Business School
Zidong Liu
PhD Candidate, Cambridge Judge Business School
Former PhD students
Katherine Bobroske
Katherine has a background in operations research engineering and decision science from Cornell University and the London School of Economics. She applies data analytics techniques within the healthcare space to optimise processes and build predictive models for disease management. Katherine has worked with several healthcare organisations including McKesson (in their nurse triage call centre), Evolent Health (a successful US-based start-up that helps doctors deliver integrated care), the NHS (at Addenbrooke’s Hospital), and SimPrints/BRAC (an NGO partnership that provides maternity care to low-income families in Bangladesh). In her PhD at the Cambridge Judge Business School, she develops big data algorithms to analyse the patient journey and to match individual patients with the most promising treatment approach.
Rene Wiedner
Assistant Professor, Warwick Business School
Rene Wiedner has been studying how managers within the NHS adapt to large-scale reforms and how their behaviour may contribute to the emergence of unintended organisational consequences. Specifically, he has used qualitative methods to trace in detail how health care contract management (also known as ‘commissioning’) has evolved following the transition of responsibilities from public sector managers to clinical commissioning groups. Additionally, he has examined how resetting formal organisational boundaries in the NHS may trigger responses that can have detrimental consequences for the provision of local healthcare services. This research is partly sponsored by the NIHR Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health and Care (CLAHRC).
Isaac Holeman
Clinical Assistant Professor, Global Health, University of Washington
Isaac Holeman is a Gates Cambridge Scholar in the innovation, strategy and organisation studies PhD programme at Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also a co-founder of the award-winning social enterprise Medic Mobile. His research emphasises the use of participant observation to understand technology initiatives in settings of poverty and high burdens of disease. His main dissertation project concerns technology design and coordination practices in the context of Kenya’s immunisation programme adopting “the Internet of things” to remotely monitor vaccine fridge temperatures.
Michael Freeman
Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations Management, INSEAD
Michael Freeman is an Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD. He received his MPhil and PhD in Management Science and Operations from the University of Cambridge, and his BSc and MSc in Mathematics, Operations Research, Statistics, and Economics from the University of Warwick.
Michael’s research is empirical in approach and focuses on topics in healthcare management and hospital operations. His current research applies advanced empirical methods and machine learning to large multi-hospital data sets in order to explore the organisational factors that interfere with the delivery of high-value, high-quality health outcomes. By working closely with hospital partners – including an ongoing honorary appointment with Cambridge University Hospitals – his research provides insights into how hospitals and other health providers can evolve their business models in order to meet the dual challenge of improving clinical outcomes while controlling costs.
Professor Freeman’s work has been published in the journal Management Science, with his study of hospital cost drivers awarded first prize in the 2016 MSOM Student Paper Competition and his research into the effects of congestion on patient routing a finalist for the Pierskalla Best Paper Award in 2014.