Collaboration Award 2022
Professor Stefan Scholtes
The Cambridge Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
Judge Business School
School of Technology
The Vice-Chancellor's Awards
for Research Impact and Engagement
About the researcher
Professor Stefan Scholtes, the Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge Judge Business School and Director of the Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise. Stefan’s work addresses the challenge of health service innovation after COVID.
Stefan has over two decades of experience teaching MBA students and executives. His executive teaching focuses on the development and delivery of bespoke leadership programmes to support system change and transformation. He is a founding member of the East of England Joint Evidence and Intelligence Cell between the NHS, Public Health England, Health Education England and Cambridge Judge, established in 2020 to support COVID planning in the region.
Stefan is Chair of the Board of Granta Medical Practices in Cambridgeshire, honorary consultant at Public Health England, and Department Editor for Healthcare Management at Management Science.
The Vice-Chancellor's Awards
for Research Impact and Engagement
About the researcher
Professor Stefan Scholtes, the Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge Judge Business School and Director of the Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise. Stefan’s work addresses the challenge of health service innovation after COVID.
Stefan has over two decades of experience teaching MBA students and executives. His executive teaching focuses on the development and delivery of bespoke leadership programmes to support system change and transformation. He is a founding member of the East of England Joint Evidence and Intelligence Cell between the NHS, Public Health England, Health Education England and Cambridge Judge, established in 2020 to support COVID planning in the region.
Stefan is Chair of the Board of Granta Medical Practices in Cambridgeshire, honorary consultant at Public Health England, and Department Editor for Healthcare Management at Management Science.
Without these models, we would be driving only with rear-view mirror. The models enable us to look forward.
Dorothy Gregson,
Deputy Regional Director of Public Health, PHE
What is the research?
Rapid COVID-19 Modelling Support for Regional Health Systems in England
The Cambridge Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise (CCHLE) is based in the Cambridge Judge Business School and played a pivotal part in enabling evidence-informed healthcare decision making during the COVID-19 crisis through their work in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) and the NHS in the East of England.
CCHLE provided modelling and forecasts based on complex and rapidly developing data on regional COVID-19 cases and hospital bed usage, which enabled PHE to effectively manage regional healthcare operations and make decisions based on evidence-based scenario generation to save lives.
Research concentrated on the development and use of novel time series models, which offer a more dynamic and reliable alternative to the structural models applied by SAGE in dealing with the developing epidemic.
Structural models, such as SEIR, capture the causal mechanisms underlying disease transmission, but in the case of COVID-19 there are so many uncertainties and changing external factors that these models leave a great deal of unquantifiable uncertainty because they rely on assumptions and unknown parameters.
Frequent data input and weekly consultations with NHS/PHE leaders
challenged the academic team to combine novel time series modelling with system dynamics modelling to support the regional leaders with a comprehensive picture of the changing pandemic.
For example, analysis by CCHLE enabled the overall effectiveness
and best timings for circuit breakers to be assessed, advising that in the second half of 2020 a carefully designed circuit breaker could save as many as 500 lives in the region.
This information was pivotal in addressing the evolving situation in the East of England region. A critical decision has been whether or not to invest in a Nightingale Hospital in the East.
In addition to the direct modelling support that informed PHE and NHS decision making, CCHLE committed to an East of
England Population Health Research Hub joint international seminar series in partnership with PHE entitled ‘Decision support for health systems after COVID-19, with regular online events from 2020 onwards.
The collaborative approach between partners enabled effective knowledge exchange throughout the period, and also led to the co-production of the [forthcoming] study Rapid COVID-19 Modelling Support for Regional Health Systems in England, which describes the real-time participatory modelling work that the team of academics, public health officials, and clinical decision-makers undertook to document the regional efforts to tackle COVID-19 in the East of England.
The models gave the regional leadership team the confidence to go against the national trend, which turned out to be an over-reaction to projections from structural models. The models developed have far reaching potential for addressing future epidemiological crises and were also applied in India in collaboration with Indian health authorities.
An extremely timely and highly impactful collaboration with public health officials, and clinical decision-makers to help address acute challenges during the pandemic. The development of these pivotal partnerships clearly enabled vital decisions to be taken around weekly case rates and bed occupancy and the researchers responded swiftly to changing situations and demands.
The judges
Quick fire Q&A
Professor Stefan Scholtes
1
What would others be surprised to learn about you?
Growing up in rural Germany, I had to repeat a year in secondary school because my performance in English was deemed too poor to proceed.
2
What motivates you?
I love working in teams on challenging and meaningful problems whose solutions make a positive difference to others.
3
If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?
Playing Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto.
4
How do you pick yourself up when research does not go to plan?
I’ve gotten used to it. My research seems to never go to plan.
5
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I’ve got a lovely family. Admittedly that’s more my wife’s achievement. But I bask in the glory.
6
What do you do to relax?
Walking, reading, playing the piano (albeit poorly)
7
Who or what inspires you?
People who have clearly articulated ideas how to make the world around them a better place, and who see their idea through, often against the odds. I have seen so many of them in healthcare – nurses, doctors, managers, support staff. They are a daily inspiration, and many are good friends.
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