Johns Hopkins teams take top two spots in Danaher Case Competition

Johns Hopkins University student teams recently won both first and second place in the seventh annual Healthcare Business Association case competition, sponsored this year by global science and technology innovator Danaher Corporation, and held Saturday, November 9, 2019 at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. In all, 16 student teams from universities across the nation traveled to Baltimore to compete for the $7,500 first-place prize, on a case judged by a panel of Danaher Health IT subject experts and business leaders.

Five Johns Hopkins students – including three from Carey Business School– comprised the winning team. Included was Abha Patil, MPH/MBA dual degree through Carey and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Eliana Glanzberg-Krainin, MPH/MBA; Gosia Latallo, PhD, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions; Julia Eckstein, MPH; and Taylor Cottle, PhD, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

Finishing second in the competition was another Johns Hopkins team composed entirely of Carey Business School students: Gilda Aussi, Carey Flexible MBA; Cathy Moore, MPH/MBA; Ernest Nyarko, Carey full-time MBA; Gururaj Rao, Carey full-time MBA; and Joseph Tisinger, Carey full-time MBA.

The third-place contingent represented the University of Southern California.

The case question put to all of the teams involved a hypothetical decision by Danaher's Diagnostics platform to commercialize additional health care software solutions that would be focused on improving patient workflow and management within a hospital setting, as well as clinical design support tools that leverage other data sources. How, the teams were asked, should the company build a strategy to make these solutions financially viable?

“The Danaher Case Competition was an enriching experience for all of our team members,” said Patil, of the first-place team. “The time leading up to the competition was full of understanding the health care analytics market, bouncing strategy ideas off of one another, and translating all of this information into an effective story for the judges. I think case competitions are a great way for students to apply what they have been learning in school to a real issue and push themselves a bit outside of their comfort zone.”

Nyarko, a member of the second-place team, remarked “The competition was a fun, transformative experience that brought together a group of some of the smartest and most ambitious individuals I’ve met in business school. We tackled some of the most relevant and complex issues keeping business leaders in America’s health care landscape up at night.”

Case competitions such as this provide unique opportunities to apply academic theory to real-world business and societal challenges. They also offer participating students exposure to and feedback from business executives at major companies like Danaher, who provide valuable strategic insight through their professional experience.

The Healthcare Business Association was founded in 2012 by Carey Business School students. Since then, the club has enrolled more than 400 members, held numerous networking events, led student treks to Fortune 50 companies, and held two conferences, in addition to running the annual case competition previously sponsored by Pfizer, and this year by Danaher. Alumni of the group are represented in all types of roles and industries within the vast and ever-growing health care space.