About Us
Professor Eivor Oborn leads a large group of faculty, focused upon healthcare organisation and management research through OHRN. This encompasses both senior and early career researchers, located across a range of subject groups within Warwick Business School (WBS) which allows for interdisciplinary research.
OHRN was founded by Professor Graeme Currie who currently is the co-director of a multi-million NIHR funded research project, CLAHRC West Midlands. OHRN is a research grouping concerned to impact policy and organisational practice, commonly through empirical studies supported by large scale funding, and who publish in the very highest quality, peer-reviewed academic journals.
Such expertise positions WBS as one of the leading research institutions for organising healthcare in the UK. This is evidenced by awards from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), HS&DR Programme in their call for studies in knowledge transfer and innovation in 2013. Under this call, for example, Professor Graeme Currie leads a NIHR HS&DR funded study that examines critical review capacity of commissioning networks in the English NHS. Professor Jacky Swan leads a NIHR HS&DR funded study to examine commissioning decisions based upon NICE Guidelines. Finally, Professor Davide Nicolini is examining Academic Health Science Networks through a NIHR HS&DR funded study.
WBS has developed a strong partnership with Warwick Medical School. Faculty from WBS, for example, work with Professor Bernard Crump in the Institute of Healthcare Leadership, developing and delivering postgraduate leadership and management education. Professor Graeme Currie leads the Implementation Research Theme for the CLAHRC West Midlands, funded by the NIHR for £10 million, which encompasses Warwick Medical School faculty.
Our Research
In her SLIM study focusing upon the introduction of Lean into healthcare, and in their study of Root Cause Analysis, Dr Nicola Burgess and Professors Nicolini and Swan collaborated with the Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Centre within the Warwick Manufacturing Group – both studies were funded by the ESRC.
WBS also strengthened its international links by obtaining funding for two Professors of Healthcare Improvement Science with Monash University, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Australia, and we are currently developing a blended learning postgraduate programme in healthcare leadership and innovation into which insights from our research studies will feed into.
Through Edward Gardiner, who focuses upon research about healthcare physical environments, WBS and OHRN work in collaboration with the Design Council, and through Professor Ivo Vlaev and Dr Nicola Burgess; we also work with the Heart of England Foundation Trust with a focus on patient safety and quality improvement.
Industry Engagement
Professor Graeme Currie is on a Wellcome Trust-Boots Advisory Board in connection with a Wellcome Trust research funding award, which examines the company’s historical contribution to healthcare. The Boots archive is one of the largest and most comprehensive in Europe, housed in a single building and supported by a team of archive specialists. Wellcome funding is designed to make it more accessible to academic study; e.g. through digitisation of its content. The Boots archive encompasses a great deal of material that relates to topics of academic interest, such as delivery of accessible public healthcare; around which Boots was an early mover in a way that may offer lessons for contemporary organisations.
Professor Leroy White is working with Ernst and Young, developing the Hospital Episodes Statistics, following which we will analyse the more sophisticated data in collaboration with Ernst and Young.
Professor Eivor Oborn has been working with London-based IT start-up HealthUnlocked looking at online communities. HealthUnlocked (currently) specialise in business analytics from online unstructured data to support health care provision, clinical trials and patient pathways.