Overview
The Cambridge Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise (CCHLE) is committed to pioneering innovative solutions for healthcare delivery in the 21st century. The centre’s core focus is on developing, implementing, and evaluating novel organizational and business models that aim to transform the healthcare landscape. Its mission is to make high-quality care more accessible, equitable, and affordable while addressing the growing burden of chronic diseases.
CCHLE prioritizes innovative, scalable delivery models that integrate seamlessly with existing hospital and primary care systems, as well as value-based payment mechanisms. These models are designed to address specific healthcare challenges and deliver solutions reliably at scale.
By leveraging the global reach and influence of Cambridge University, the centre brings together key stakeholders from academia, government, and industry. This collaborative approach facilitates the assessment and implementation of cutting-edge healthcare models, enabling the CCHLE to tackle some of the most urgent challenges in modern healthcare through interdisciplinary partnerships.
The health industry faces unparalleled pressures. An aging population and persistent increase in chronic diseases and unhealthy lifestyles lead to unprecedented demands on healthcare delivery organisations around the globe.
Our main areas of focus are:
Welcome message
Throughout history, the desire to help the sick has been one of humanity’s noblest motivations. It drives daily efforts in communities, hospitals and other healthcare organizations worldwide and fuels the innovations of scientists and entrepreneurs.
This collective dedication has resulted in a remarkable achievement: Life expectancy has increased by three months each year over more than a century. However, societies around the world face formidable new challenges. Disparities in healthy life expectancy between socio-economic groups are steadily increasing and can reach up to two decades. Chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent, and mental illness affects all age groups, leading to declining productivity and escalating healthcare costs. The focus of the 21st century must now be on balancing the extension of lifespan with the ability to extend healthy life for all.
Our current healthcare systems, built for the 20th century with its focus on treating illness, are not designed to meet these ambitious challenges. Hospitals are struggling to fulfil their core mission of providing acute and specialist care for the sick, and primary care operates within a fragmented landscape that is ill-equipped to manage chronic diseases reliably on a large scale. At the same time, rapid technological advances in biopharma, diagnostics, med-tech, and AI offer powerful tools to improve population health. But integrating these technologies into existing healthcare delivery, rapidly and at scale, remains a challenge.
CCHLE is founded on the premise that extending healthy life for all requires innovative healthcare delivery systems. The CCHLE’s core mission is to develop these models in a manner that is both sustainable and socially acceptable. While business will play a pivotal role in these innovations, it must operate within guardrails that prevent short-term profit-seeking from undermining long-term value and societal health outcomes. Positioned within Cambridge Judge Business School, the CCHLE is uniquely equipped to bridge the gap between government, industry, and academia, bringing together experts from diverse fields with a shared commitment to improving population health and well-being.
Stefan Scholtes
Co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise; Dennis Gillings Professor for Health Management, Cambridge Judge Business School
