Nicola Burgess

Principal Investigator

Reader of Operations Management

Nicola Burgess is Reader in Healthcare Operations Management at Warwick Business School and Course Director for the Foundation Year programme. Nicola's research activity has primarily focused in healthcare, conducting a number of formative and summative evaluations of service improvement initiatives within healthcare settings around the world. She is currently leading the national evaluation of the NHS partnership with Virginia Mason institute which is due to conclude in 2021. In May 2020 the evaluation was extended to capture how a systematic approach to quality improvement shaped the operational response of NHS hospitals to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nicola also serves in an advisor on NHS program boards and acts as a reviewer for several academic journals.

Nicola has published widely in world leading journals such as Journal of Operations Management, Human Resource Management, European Journal of Operations Research, British Journal of Management and the British Medical Journal.

Nicola dot Burgess at wbs dot ac dot uk

Graeme Currie

Co-Investigator

Professor of Public Management

Graeme Currie is Professor of Public Management at Warwick Business School. His research focuses upon health and social care settings, within which he has particular interest in leadership, innovation and strategic change. Through large scale research funding provided by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) for the Applied Research Centre West Midlands (NIHR ARC WM), his research improves services for those with long-term conditions in health and social care with colleagues in medical schools and a social care department. He also leads a large scale research programme funded by the ESRC that supports the transition of care leavers into adulthood through the spread of innovations. His research extends beyond the UK, working with clinical researchers and practitioners, in India to support the implementation of early intervention for young people with first episode psychosis, and Australia to support women into healthcare leadership positions (through NHMRC grant). He is a co-investigator on the Health Foundation funded evaluation of VMI, within which he provides particular expertise on the role of middle managers and how distribution of leadership and HRM intervention supports the implementation of VMI.

Graeme dot Currie at wbs dot ac dot uk

Dr Bernard Crump

Co-Investigator

Professor of Practice in Healthcare and Leadership

Prof Bernard Crump (MBChB FRCP(UK) FFPHM D.Sc. (Hon) 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.

Bernard dot Crump at wbs dot ac dot uk

Professor Mark Johnson

Co-Investigator

Professor of Operations Management

Mark is Head of Group for Operations at WBS. He holds a Doctorate (EngD) and MSc from the University of Warwick. His current research (very!) broadly examines control and coordination in operations and supply chains.

Mark's research has been published in the Journal of Operations Management, Research Policy, the Journal of Supply Chain Management, the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, the International Journal of Production Economics and the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management amongst others.

Mark dot Johnson at wbs dot ac dot uk

Dr Altricia Dawson

Research Fellow

Altricia Dawson is a Research Fellow in the Operations Group at Warwick Business School. Altricia’s primary responsibly is as the Research Fellow for the national evaluation of the NHS partnership with the Virginia Mason Institute. She is currently assessing the adoption of healthcare improvement practices in the NHS and understanding how these practices integrate to achieve process improvement.

Altricia recently completed her PhD in Operations Management at Warwick Business School focusing on the behavioural differences of production workers from different cultures. Her research interests include behavioural operations, healthcare, process improvement and social science methodologies (i.e. surveys, experiments, multilevel modelling and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis).

Altricia dot Dawson at wbs dot ac dot uk

Emily Rowe

WBS Doctoral Researcher

Emily is an expert in social network analysis (SNA) methods and will shortly complete her thesis on the Embeddedness of Healthcare Professionals which draws on data from the NHS-VMI partnership. Emily has recently set up an independent consultancy Arctura Consulting Ltd. specializing in SNA. If you or your organisation would like to find out more about SNA and why networks are important for innovation contact Emily at

emily dot rowe at arcturaconsulting dot com