The Wheeler Institute for Business and Development
Identify global challenges, apply insight and forge communities of learning and practice to implement large-scale and enduring change.
Crowd medicine
How sharing something as conventionally private as a doctor’s appointment with complete strangers has unexpected benefits
10 February 2020
Today we are sharing more and more stuff – from jobs, cars, homes, office space and clothes.
But would you share your doctor’s appointment? While certain appointments will always be private, pioneering research is turning this convention on its head.
For over a decade Kamalini Ramdas, Professor of Management Science and Operations and Deloitte Chair of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at London Business School (LBS), has been at the forefront of research into Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs). It is an approach that has proven successful in the US, Australia and the UK.
In this video Professor Ramdas is joined by her collaborators Dr Ryan Buell, the Finnegan Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and LBS Phd candidate Nazli Sonmez to talk about their work with the Aravind Eye Hospital.
Hear how patients at Aravind’s hospital in Pondicherry, India have responded to SMAs – learning from each other’s experiences and developing the confidence to ask more questions.
Overcoming initial skepticism, the SMA principles are even being applied to outpatients too.
“We get to know each other’s eye issues and the difficulties we face. Throughout, our doubts and questions are cleared up.”
This film with Aravind Eye Care is supported by the Wheeler Institute for Business Development and Learning Innovation at LBS.
The Wheeler Institute for Business and Development
Identify global challenges, apply insight and forge communities of learning and practice to implement large-scale and enduring change.
