‌A team of Lancaster MBA students has come out top in a tough new case competition focused on the healthcare sector and organised by Warwick Business School.

Full-time MBA students Abhishek Paryani, Leinar Ramos, Vinodh Venkatraman and Vishrut Kumar Singh were competing against teams from three other top schools, Cranfield, Manchester and Warwick. The competition was sponsored by IMS Health, a leading provider of information, services and technology for the healthcare industry.

Acting in the role of consultants to a global pharmaceutical firm, each team was asked to examine the issue of 'non-adherence' – the term used when patients, for various reasons, fail to take the medicines prescribed to them or do not do so in the correct dosages. This represents not only a serious health risk to the individual patients concerned as it reduces the effectiveness of their drug regime, but is also considered to offer significant revenue opportunities for the healthcare industry.

In their presentations to the company’s executive management the teams were asked to advise on why focusing on this particular issue would represent a worthwhile investment, and what the company would need to consider to address the issue appropriately – both from a patient perspective and in terms of commercial strategy.

As none of the Lancaster team had a background in health care or related industries, the task required them to learn very quickly and prioritize key areas.

Some crucial information was only revealed on the day, but detailed advance preparation to research the market and build up a clear picture of current conditions was critical, said Abhishek Paryani:

“All in all, it was a challenging exercise that gave us insight into the issues within the big pharmaceutical companies and it allowed us to come up, within the one week, with creative and multi-disciplinary solutions that kept in mind the different stakeholders involved.”

“It’s a tribute to the work-rate and the analytical skills of these students that they were able to get to grips so quickly with the complex demands of an unfamiliar sector and bring insightful proposals to the table,” said , Director of the Full-time MBA. "It’s something we train our MBA students to do – and is a capability that will serve them well, wherever their careers take them.”