Manchester Business School came out on top in the 2015 WBS Case Study Challenge Competition, sponsored by leading healthcare solutions provider GE Healthcare.

Team Raptors consisting of Abhinav, Mohamed Amar, Gulmira Zhumatayeva, Jose Luis Campos, Marco Mendoza and Julie Burton won the first prize of £4,200 after a panel of judges decided their business plan was the best out of eight competing international finalists.

The judging panel, including experts from GE Healthcare, Nuffield Trust, Stockers and Warwick Business School awarded SDA Associates from SDA Bocconi, consisting of Piero Senatore, Sahil Sahni, Olaitan Awonusi, Johanna Grisales, Miguel Miro and Davide Scannapieco second place.

Marc Barlow, Head of Strategic Marketing Solutions Marketing Organization at GE Healthcare and one of this year’s judges said: “This is the second time we’ve been associated with this competition. We were extremely impressed with quality of the outputs from all of the teams participating.

“The Emergency Room is a key department for hospitals all across the world and faces increasing challenges as the global population grows and ages.

“The teams identified and developed a number of excellent approaches to enhancing the performance of the Emergency Room and the winning team from Manchester University Business School developed some highly innovative solutions the judges felt could really make a difference to how care is delivered in this setting.

“Congratulations to all who took part in this innovative competition.”

One of the experts presiding over events, Chet Trivedy, NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Emergency Medicine Centre for Applied Health Research and Delivery (CAHRD) at Warwick Medical School, added: “Working mainly with health care professionals it was interesting to see how the business orientated students addressed this challenge.”

Teams included Judge 'Cambridge Health innovators' (Cambridge, UK), ESADE 'Genome' (Spain), Manchester 'Raptors' (UK), Rotterdam 'Raptors' and Rotterdam 'Excelsior' (The Netherlands), Bocconi 'SDA Associates' (Italy), CASS 'City Knights' (UK) and Warwick 'Free thinkers' (UK).

As part of the two day event things kicked off with an interactive icebreaking element on the Friday, hosted by Sarah Jackson Career Manager at WBS and Sue Thorn, Director of CareersPlus at WBS, before the teams got down to the real challenge on the Saturday.

The beaming winners: Team Raptors (L to R) Abhinav, Mohamed Amar, Gulmira Zhumatayeva, Jose Luis Campos, Marco Mendoza and Julie Burton

The competition had three parts. The first research section involved a case pack for researching the NHS in England focussed on the structure of the NHS emergency system and the many challenges it faces today. It also outlined some of the thoughts about changes needed.

Teams were then asked to design an emergency department of the future that provides solutions to the challenges facing NHS England and encouraged to include innovative ideas and experiences from their home countries.

Runners up: SDA Associates (L to R) Piero Senatore, Sahil Sahni, Olaitan Awonusi,
Johanna Grisales, Miguel Miro and Davide Scannapieco

The second part of the event involved pitching a viable idea able to deliver real solutions and high return on investment today.

The teams had to pitch their concepts and persuade the judges as to why their solution would have the greatest impact, why it would be most future proof, how it is viable and how it is able solve today’s challenges while delivering a high return on investment.

The final element of the competition was the wild card handed to the two overall finalists, Team Raptors an SDA Associates.

In this round the teams were looking at prioritisation of future solutions for a failing A&E department. 

The two finalists were asked to determine which solutions from their ED of the future could and should be implemented right now in this failing department and to outline imminent priorities in the department’s fire fighting.

Team Raptors emerged triumphant to walk away with the £4,200 first prize.

Dressed to impress: The WBS staff and MBA students team responsible for this year's case study challenge competition

Karishma Frank, an MBA student and part of this year’s competition organisation committee said: “The participants this year really put together some great ideas on how to improve the NHS emergency system. Congratulations to Manchester Business School for winning and thank you to all the teams for making it such an enjoyable day.

“This year’s Case Challenge was a great success as a completely student led competition and the organising committee were proud to receive acknowledgement from participants, Stockers, GE as well as the team at The Shard team for the excellent turn around.”