As part of an organizational transformation, Boehringer Ingelheim launched the University of Medicine Excellence (UME) in July 2021 according to their purpose of ‘Transforming Lives for Generations’ and commitment to employee development and continuous learning. Boehringer Ingelheim, a global pharmaceutical company, co-designs and co-delivers the executive education program with Harvard Medical School (HMS) Corporate Learning.

UME’s first and flagship program is ‘Accelerate,’ an ambitious program intended to reach virtually every person in Boehringer Ingelheim’s wider Medicine organization. Since the launch, nearly 1,000 learners have already completed Accelerate. The learners are drawn from multiple medicine disciplines across Boehringer Ingelheim, including clinical development & operations, regulatory affairs, medical affairs, biostatistics & data sciences, and many other related functions, including some outside of medicine. Accelerate covers a range of topics, including patient centricity, various aspects of leadership and new ways of working, digital technologies, and real-world evidence. Of the learners, 69 went on to complete ‘AccelerateEX’, extending the educational program to include in-person components at HMS and at the company’s headquarters in Ingelheim.

We sat down with Guido Scholze, the global head of UME at Boehringer Ingelheim, to discuss the programs’ successes and how they fit into Boehringer Ingelheim’s strategic goals.

HMS: What are the goals of the University of Medicine Excellence? 

Dr. Scholze: Our mission is to create the next generation of leaders and leading experts in medicine, primarily in clinical development and medical affairs roles, who can bring innovative treatments to patients faster than ever before. Our vision to achieve this goal was to create a best-in-class learning organization to bolster our culture of excellence and drive a culture of continuous learning, while providing the skills and competencies our people in medicine need in a period of transformation across the organization and in the health care environment. As this is a unified goal and need for all of medicine, we wanted to give as many people access to the program as possible. In the first year alone, approximately 950 learners were able to enroll.  

HMS: How does UME support Boehringer Ingelheim’s goals?

Dr. Scholze: As an organization, we cannot afford to stand still. We must move forward to deliver for our patients and deliver on our promise to be constructively disruptive to get the best outcomes and reach our medicine goals. To transform lives for generations, which is our company’s purpose, we need to be excellent throughout and become leaders and leading experts in medicine, bringing life-changing treatments to patients faster than ever before. Patients are at the front and center of our decision-making and innovations. Our medicine goals are around speed — speeding up our clinical development, our decisions, our innovations — so that health care solutions can be brought to patients faster, and around value — creating more value for more stakeholders — for patients, doctors, providers, payers and so on, not least by championing agility, intrapreneurship and empowering our people. We recognize that the future of medicine is now. 

HMS: Tell us about the participants in the Accelerate program. What are their roles and backgrounds? 

Dr. Scholze: Learners come from very different disciplines, functions, and roles, from medical affairs to clinical development, but also pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs, quality medicine, statistics, and many, many other roles. 

The majority have a scientific background, not necessarily medicine, but biology or chemistry or adjacent fields. However, we also have people that are not scientifically trained enrolled in the program, and their feedback is also very positive. It’s a big commitment and the learners need to reserve some time each week for the program, but if they are engaged, they will greatly benefit from understanding those principal concepts in medicine, the disease areas, the model of actions, and how systems are interlinked. 

HMS: Boehringer Ingelheim is a multinational organization. Are your learners international?

Dr. Scholze: Yes, it's a global program. Now, around 50% of the learners come from Germany and the US, where we also have a very strong presence. The others come from across the globe, from New Zealand and Australia to China, Japan, Singapore, the Middle East and throughout Europe.

HMS: How is Boehringer Ingelheim adapting to the rapidly shifting forces in health care?

Dr. Scholze: I think changing rapidly is almost an understatement. For Boehringer Ingelheim, we need to be at the forefront of the change, not simply keep pace with the change. That is why we are upskilling our people through many initiatives, including UME. We believe that our people are our biggest assets and our competitive advantage. At the end of the day, if we invest in them, I think we will all be living that change. 

We also obviously need to get things right for our patients, who, thanks to technological advancements, are taking on a more leading role in their own health care and disease management. More than ever, we are able to understand them and capture data with new sensors, new technologies and new tools. So, there are limitless opportunities to create revolutionary approaches to medicine, to improve quality of life at a bare minimum, and, back to our purpose, to transform lives for generations.

HMS: I know it's still early, but what would you say has been the impact of UME on Boehringer Ingelheim?

Dr. Scholze: The biggest impact is the huge community of learners and alumni that has been created in a very short period of time and the innovation that follows. In addition to gaining new knowledge and skills, learners have greatly expanded their networks and started to collaborate. That connection and collaboration have already been fruitful and led to innovation. 

When it comes to AccelerateEx, the program is specifically designed for the application of the learnings from Accelerate. First, small teams are formed and asked to scope a project to solve real challenges in Medicine. Then, over three months, they are coached by the faculty, are sponsored by a senior executive and then they present their solutions to those challenges to senior leaders in the company. Some of those solutions are now in the implementation phase. For instance, a patient-centric app to capture food intake during clinical trials has been suggested, as has a real-world-evidence strategy, which could speed up the development of one of our promising compounds in the cardiovascular disease area. For me, that’s a very strong signal that UME is fostering innovation.

Going forward, we will closely monitor the results and achievements from applying the learnings from UME sessions and creating innovations. 

HMS: What does the future of UME look like?

Dr. Scholze: In 2023, besides ongoing programs, we really want to expand and deepen the positive impact of UME alumni on the organization. Therefore, we have designed a virtual annual summit and are planning multiple face-to-face events throughout the year to bring people together to continuously learn, to share their learnings and to simply connect people. We also plan specific webinars, such as a new series on rare diseases, combining HMS and Boehringer Ingelheim’s expertise in areas relevant to our alumni. 

Outcomes 

The results of the UME have already been evident. Accelerate learners say that their confidence in Boehringer Ingelheim’s medicine excellence capabilities improved by almost 20% and they rated their likelihood to apply the learnings from the program at 9 out of 10. Of the roughly 950 Accelerate learners, 69 then completed AccelerateEX, which included a weeklong on-site program in Boston, several weeks of project work with virtual coaching by HMS, and culminated in over 12 projects of strategic importance that were presented to senior executives at the company’s headquarters in Ingelheim. A large proportion of those suggested solutions were then successfully handed over to the respective asset teams or functional centers of excellence for implementation. 

Since the beginning of the Accelerate program, Harvard faculty members and some industry practitioners have delivered hundreds of hours of live teaching with the help of contributors from Boehringer Ingelheim. However, companies like Boehringer Ingelheim also look to HMS for firsthand insights into the science and practice of medicine. Therefore, HMS’s HMX courses, online learning focusing on new approaches in science and cutting-edge practice of medicine, also became available to Boehringer Ingelheim’s employees in August 2022, and 153 learners completed at least one of the 15 offered courses. For the courses that started in January 2023, 188 learners were enrolled. 

HMS Corporate Learning leverages faculty expertise from throughout HMS and the entire Harvard University community to share with health care teams wishing to gain new perspectives. To learn about HMS custom programs, read about the approach or hear from clients themselves.