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Impetus of Project Management in Healthcare


Everything we do now is based on the concept of 'Managing By Projects' or MBP, especially in health sector. In this scenario, it is absolutely essential to equip ourselves with knowledge of project management and its linkages with healthcare.

Winds of rapid globalisation and phenomenal transformation of the entire world to emerge as a single global village have made organisations and societies to become 'projectised'...

Project Management (PM) is one of the fastest growing disciplines across the world. Very recently, Fortune magazine rated project management as the most preferred career choice among professionals. In order to enhance 'knowledge value' irrespective of the discipline one is associated with (such as - medicine, law, engineering, software, construction, consulting etc.) it is important to have a clear understanding of principles and practices of project management.

A project is a vision, a need, a dream or a strategy which need to be converted to reality through planned delivery of work. Project management helps us in effective and efficient accomplishment of this mission, by enabling better planning, implementation and control of events in pre-defined ways.

Project management is the art and science of converting abstract into concrete, vision into reality and strategy into delivery. At every stage, we need to create value and deliver value. This realisation can be most effective through formal understanding of project management processes. To emerge as an independent discipline, PM need to have its own code of ethics and governance; standards and best practices; a Body-of-Knowledge; continuous research activities; and certification programs for people to display their understanding of fundamentals associated with the discipline – thankfully, PM is having all of these five ingredients. Though project management has been in practice since the beginning of the civilisation, its modern day interpretation is new.

While general management encompasses aspects of planning, organising, staffing, executing and controlling, it is essentially applicable to operations of an ongoing enterprise. In contrast, project management principles are more specific to implementation of a specific project, which is unique and temporary, having a finite start and finish time and has all the associated problems and risks associated with it. 

Winds of rapid globalisation and phenomenal transformation of the entire world to emerge as a single global village have made organisations and societies to become 'projectised' in their functioning and operations. This happens due to the fact that in a globalised scenario, organisations need to be faster, better and more cost effective in order to survive and remain in business.

In this new scenario, it is imperative to bring efficiency by reducing the total time taken from initiating a concept till its actual realisation. In 2001, Fujitsu, Japan had declared that "Project Management is the New Economic Infrastructure". That is why, PM as a formal discipline is fast emerging as the key area of growth. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard University once said in the late 90's, "There are two disciplines which would dominate the substantial part of 21st century… and one of them is project management."

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