MBA in Pharmaceutical and Health Care Management: A Career in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Read on to discover what an MBA in pharmaceuticals management involves, what it can do for your career. It’s no secret that for most, career progression is the main goal for completing an MBA. Post-MBA salaries are usually much higher, plus the skills gained on an MBA course (such as leadership, financial literacy and business acumen) are invaluable.MBA in Pharmaceuticals Management or healthcare MBA specializations aren’t as common as other tracks, but an MBA with this concentration can be a fantastic way to boost your job prospects in a competitive (and booming) industry. Whether you’re a scientist or a marketeer, an MBA can turn you into a senior manager, or even a c-suite executive.

MBA in Pharmaceutical Management lowdown:

Although MBAs specializing in pharmaceuticals or healthcare aren’t as widely offered as other subjects such as marketing, finance and other specializations  a number of top business schools do offer this concentration, including Tiss Mumbai, Symbiosis and Manipal University.

Along with core MBA modules and electives, students will study courses such as:

# Innovation in healthcare

# Technology, AI and healthcare

# Negotiation in healthcare and pharmaceuticals

# Ethics in healthcare

# Data analytics in healthcare

# Strategic leadership in pharmaceuticals

Benefits of an MBA specializing in pharma.

Many people who work in the pharmaceutical industry have science degrees but might need that extra business knowledge achieved through an MBA to get you to the upper echelons of their company.

One of the most significant benefits of an MBA for healthcare and pharma professionals is the financial knowledge gained. With high profit margins and tightly controlled budgets, good fiscal knowledge is essential for senior roles.

The pharma and healthcare industries rely on cross-company collaboration and having an MBA can help you understand the company matrix better and enable you to facilitate interactions between teams. An MBA will focus on developing leadership and communication skills, plus innovative tactics and methodology for solving complex problems creatively. MBA alumni in the pharmaceutical industry enjoy high salaries.

Job opportunities:

The importance of the pharma industry will never falter, as humans will always be prone to illness and disease, particularly with the increasing aging population worldwide. Therefore, jobs will be available in the industry for the foreseeable future.

There are a range of roles in the pharma and healthcare industries, ranging from the more technical work in labs to quality control, regulatory affairs, operations, marketing, and more. Senior job titles include:

# Senior project manager

# Regional healthcare manager

# Senior consultant

# Director of regulatory affairs

# Statistics director

# Senior quality control analyst

# Drug development director

Top Recruiters:

Recruiters emphasize that an MBA’s ability to handle uncertainty is part of why they are so valuable to the pharma industry. “MBA’s are champions for change,” says former Assistant Director of Talent Acquisition at Astellas Pharma US, Inc. “They can deal with ambiguity, and there’s lots of that going on in our industry.”

Popular recruiters in the pharmaceutical industry include:

# Eli Lilly

# Pfizer

# Bristol-Meyers Squibb

# Novartis

# GlaxoSmithKline Plc

# Sanofi

# Bayer AG

# Merck & Co Inc

# Johnson & Johnson

Top Colleges offering MBA in Healthcare Management.

The number of colleges providing a course in MBA Health Care Management are limited. Some of the Indian Colleges are:

# Tiss, Mumbai.

# Symbiosis, Pune

# T.A.Pai Management Institute

# Goa Institute of Management

# Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research (WeSchool)

# SIES College of Management Studies

By Dr Jagdish Prasad, Associate Dean, CMI IBM, CMI Institute of Business Management.