TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The Goa Institute of Management (GIM) has launched a post graduate diploma in healthcare management touted to be the country’s first and equivalent to a Masters in Business Administration.
The two year full time residential programme, which was inaugurated on Saturday, will have dedicated experienced healthcare management faculty, interactions with industry experts and access to an exhaustive and comprehensive collection of databases, the institute has claimed.
The curriculum will include field visits to hospitals, pharmaceutical plants, primary health centres as well as large corporate hospitals to study their functioning. On completion of the course, graduates from this program will be unusually well qualified to understand and respond to the issues and challenges faced by the healthcare industry.
The first batch of 60 students comes from varied educational backgrounds adding to enhanced classroom experience and learning. Fifty of the batch comes from medicine related fields (pharmacy, dentistry, homeopathy, biotechnology, nursing & clinical research). Aged between 20 and 31 years, 54% of the students are male while 46% are female.
Speaking on the launch of the programme, Dean of GIM Dr Sunil Rai said that the industry needs proper managers in view of the kind of growth that it has seen.
“Obviously it needs better and effective management of the sector to reveal optimum results and opportunities. Realizing the potential and needs of this sector, Goa Institute of Management has designed a post graduate diploma in healthcare management which has opened its door to students from this academic year,” Dr Rai said.
The healthcare industry in India valued at well over Rs 1.5 crore. Earlier a similar course was being offered by the Marian Institute of Healthcare management started by Fr Romualdo de Souza, who incidentally is also the founder of Goa Institute of Management.
