Leading Strategic Innovation in Healthcare


This Community is situated within an online programme of learning which supports the development of knowledge and skills in service improvement and innovation in healthcare. It includes components which focus on: Leadership and Strategy in the context of healthcare as a professional bureaucracy and the health ecosystem as a complex adaptive system; the characteristics and antecedents of high-performance in healthcare; improvement and innovation practices; the key resources for healthcare improvement, finance and workforce, and how services can be led in the context of scarcity of these resources.
Although rooted in a business school, the community is led by a professor of practice with extensive experience of healthcare delivery at local regional and national level. It incorporates inputs from Leadership studies, Organisational Management, HR management, Operational Management, and Entrepreneurship and Innovation, all in the context of healthcare practice.
How to get involved?
(Students and educators)
Contact the EUTOPIA curriculum team: Jo Angouri (J.Angouri@warwick.ac.uk) and Karen Triquet (karen.triquet@vub.be).

Learning Community Members
Lead: Bernard Crump (UW). Email: Bernard.Crump@wbs.ac.uk

MBChB FRCP(UK) FFPHM D.Sc. (Hon)
Prof Bernard Crump studied medicine at the University of Birmingham, qualifying in 1980. After seven years in clinical practice and clinical research, he returned to the West Midlands to postgraduate training in public health medicine. He spent a decade as Director of Public Health in South Birmingham, and in Leicestershire, where he was also Deputy Chief Executive. In 2002 he became CEO of Shropshire and Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority, a post which he occupied until being appointed the first CEO of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement in July 2005. The NHS Institute has developed a wide range of programmes that are supporting the improvement of the NHS, the Productive Ward and the Productive Series, the No Delays Achiever and commissioners.
He has written and lectured on a wide range of topics in healthcare, including aspects of population health, the role of clinicians in management, health and healthcare improvement, the use of metrics in encouraging improvement and the use of health economics in decision-making. He is currently Professor of Practice at Warwick Business School.

Partner: Natàlia Pascual-Argente (UPF). Email: natalia.pascual@upf.edu

Natàlia Pascual-Argente is Associate Professor of Health Economics at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She holds a PhD in Biomedicine, MSc in Specialized Economic Analysis and an MPA. She has a background in Political Science. She is Deputy Director General at UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM), and she is in Academic board of postgraduate programs in Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics since 2014. She has done research in pharmacoeconomics, mainly carrying cost of illness studies, cost effectiveness analysis, cost analysis and literature reviews. She is member of the Spanish Health Economics Association (AES) and the Catalan Society for Health Management (SCGS).

Partner: Viorela Vaidean (UBB). Email: viorela.vaidean@econ.ubbcluj.ro

Viorela-Ligia Văidean obtained a Bachelor Degree in Finance and Banking from ‘Babeş - Bolyai’ University (BBU) Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2006, further graduating a Master program in Corporate Finance and Insurances and another one in Project Management and Evaluation. She’s also an engineer, having graduated the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in 2007. She successfully followed a full time PhD program, obtaining the PhD title in the Finance field, in 2010. In 2015 she graduated a postdoctoral study program. She successfully defended her Habilitation Thesis in 2021. She has worked as a Teaching Assistant and then a Lecturer, for the Finance Department within BBU Cluj-Napoca. She has also worked as an Expert for different EU financed projects and grants. She has published more than 40 research papers and attended several international conferences. She has been the author or coauthor of ten books and international book chapters. Her research interests cover the areas of Health Economics, Corporate Finance, Financial Management, Public Policies.