Gilles Reinhardt, new professor in business analytics

Gilles Reinhardt has joined the Telfer School of Management this year in the Business Analytics Section. Professor Reinhardt researches how business analytics and operations management can contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare delivery. He will draw on his academic and professional experience to explore how delivery processes can be designed or improved to best serve industry, providers and beneficiaries alike.

“Quality of care and efficiency are often perceived as misaligned goals in the healthcare realm,” notes Reinhardt, who holds a Ph.D. in operations management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “This often leads to conflict and friction in the upstream portion of the supply chain which in turn can compromise critical interactions in its downstream portion, namely the provider-patient relationships.”

The resolution of such conflicts at the production and manufacturing level has paved the way for innovative solutions that have significantly improved the agility, responsiveness and efficiency of supply chains. While witnessing, taking part in, or disseminating examples of those successes in classrooms and research, Reinhardt identified similar concerns in a variety of healthcare settings. “Long wait times for specialty interventions, critical bottlenecks in emergency services, excessive costs and delays for vital material and supplies, and the set-up of large and complex care pathways: these can all be approached through a careful adaptation of proven concepts that have yielded success and satisfaction across the supply chain constituency.”

Reinhardt returns to Ottawa after spending over twenty years in Chicago, an international nexus of operations, transportation, manufacturing, and service. “That city has an impressive track record of pragmatic private and civic achievements, conceptualized through complex and innovative designs and realized with ground breaking problem-solving accomplishments. Soaking up this inspiring environment every day was a big motivator for my research and my teaching.”

Reinhardt’s current research interest focuses on prescription drug access, availability and cost. He will be teaching courses in business analytics and in operations management. “Those were my two favourite courses as an undergraduate here back in the eighties. Now I get to teach them to the next generation. What an amazing honour!”