After months of planning, UCL GBSH welcomed its first cohort of young, bright undergraduates this September to its pioneering Business and Health Programme. One of UCL’s most popular interdisciplinary programmes in its very first year of launch, the BSc/MSci Business and Health trains students to be the next generation of leaders in the health sector. The programme features a hands-on curriculum in Business and Management, with a specialised focus on health, offering pathways in Healthcare Management, Health Science, and Health Technology.
Welcome Week
We welcomed students from over 15 countries, representing a diverse range of backgrounds – from the sciences to the arts and economics – and they all shared a drive to be change makers in the health and related sectors. We welcomed them to UCL’s iconic Senate House in the Bloomsbury campus on Monday, 22nd September, where they were greeted by UCL GBSH’s Founding Director, Nora Colton and UCL’s Vice Provost for Health, Ibrahim Abubakar, who congratulated them for being the first cohort of a pioneering new programme. They also attended the inaugural lecture by Dr Joanne Hackett, Vice President at IQVIA, who discussed how the use of well-designed and curated health data can transform healthcare systems.
Our students enjoyed a welcome party the next day at UCL East campus, where they were joined by Iñaki Ereño, Group CEO of Bupa, who inspired them by sharing his own journey in the health sector and answering their numerous questions about health, the business of health, and careers.
At the induction session on Friday, our students were introduced to their programme and to UCL. The induction also included a panel discussion on reimagining health from various disciplinary perspectives, featuring some of our academics from the fields of health economics, statistics, innovation, and strategy, who are teaching on the programme.
Teaching Term
The following week, the start of the teaching term (29th September), we introduced our students to the intense academic life of UCL. Our Term 1 academic team included a stellar group of experts – from health economists and professional accountants to digital marketing experts, company directors, and CXOs. Our students read an eclectic variety of materials – ranging from classics to books, cases, and articles, many of which are authored by their own academics.
Our programme is designed to be both fun and challenging. Four modules: Introduction to Management, Principles and Practices of Economics, Accounting and Finance for Managers, and Principles of Marketing, taught over 10 weeks introduced our students to a core set of business concepts (a mini-MBA!), with a special focus on health. Each module was organised around weekly expert-led lectures, immersive hands-on seminars, and additional pre- and post-readings, as well as audio and video sessions to reinforce learning outside of class.
Each part, lecture and seminar, plays a unique role in the learning journey of our students. Our module lectures are delivered by recognised industry and academic experts, who bring their experience to the class, coupled with evidence-based teaching materials.
These lectures are delivered by a diverse group of experts, UCL academics, visiting scholars, and distinguished guests. For example, one of the highlights of the term was a guest lecture on leadership by the Honourable Gregory Hunt, a former Minister of Health of Australia, who reflected on his own leadership experience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, discussing the why, where, and how of leadership.
Our module seminars provide hands-on learning opportunities for our students in small groups, facilitated by expert academics. Typically organised around activities – whether developing a slideshow on a marketing challenge, conducting data analysis to find patterns, or solving live problem sets – each seminar, running for 2 hours, puts our students into learning situations where they must actively find solutions.
The seminar method allows our students not only to gain a hands-on understanding of the topics covered during lectures, but it also teaches them a more critical lesson – learning how to learn. They learn essential skills, such as teamwork and communication, while also gaining subject-specific knowledge. In the same week as Gregory Hunt’s lecture on leadership, our students played a cooperative strategy board game, Pandemic, during the seminars, where they had to work together in teams to find a cure for diseases before they spread around the world. As leadership is a particularly tricky thing to teach passively, such a hands-on simulation of health situations (like a pandemic) helps students get a more grounded appreciation of concepts such as the value of collaboration, communication, and role clarity in high-pressure situations.
Special Activities
Beyond the regular teaching weeks, the first term was also marked by special events that enhanced our students' learning. In the first few weeks, students joined a special induction session at the UCL Library, as well as a specially curated workshop on Academic Communication. Some of our students also chose to join UCL’s pre-incubation programme, Explore, designed to hone their entrepreneurial skills, delivered by UCL Innovation and Enterprise on the Bloomsbury and UCL East campuses.
As part of the Introduction to Management module, our students also participated in two hackathons, first, an informal med-tech hackathon where they designed posters on innovative medical devices within a span of 2 hours, and second, a more formal Community Hackathon, a competition organised in association with London’s Newham city council for our students in the final week of the term.
During the hackathon, our students worked in teams to solve a real managerial problem faced by a local community organisation, Uplift Ventures, which is on a mission to train, support and connect women, particularly those who’ve been excluded from work or digital opportunity, with the tools to turn their healthy home-cooked meals and culinary heritage into viable income streams. Students first attended a briefing lecture on the organisation, delivered by the organisation itself. Then, during their seminars, they had two hours to develop a solution to one of three managerial problems faced by the organisation: food safety, delivery, or returns.
To support personalised learning for our student community, we have also established six Student Academic Communities, catering to six distinct academic themes that our students have expressed interest in, ranging from Health Science and Discovery to Data, Economics, and Finance. These communities, led by students and supported by academics, are spaces where students can foster peer learning and closer interaction with UCL experts, aligning with UCL’s connected curriculum philosophy. To further support them, each student is supported by a personal academic tutor (a UCL academic), as well as senior personal academic tutors, who are accessible points of academic contact for your students beyond their classroom. These support systems, beyond the existing support at UCL, provided our students with a learning environment where they felt supported throughout their time at UCL.
In the middle of the term, we also hosted a celebration party at the end of the fifth week, featuring the UCL magic society. Throughout the term, UCL GBSH also hosted a leadership series which featured several global experts in the field of AI and health. These events, open to all, were also attended by our students, as they began to connect more with the broader GBSH community at such gatherings. Of course, UCL’s own eventful calendar, especially of its various clubs and societies, is a regular draw for our students, who have enthusiastically participated in them, and do even more so as they settle into their new life at UCL.
As the term comes to a close, we can see our students growing into more confident individuals, ready to take on bigger and bolder challenges during their careers, and poised to be transformed into the next generation of leaders in the health sector. Seeing this glow and confidence is deeply gratifying for all of us at GBSH, who have been a part of this journey with them on this path-breaking programme.