May 4, 2010

At the age of 17, Omar Molato, a native of Morocco who also holds French citizenship, looked at two paths before him: medicine and business. He had to choose one. Twelve years later, he sees those two paths closer each day to merging together: he is almost a third of the way through his year as an IMD MBA 2010 participant.

He has no regrets about following in the footsteps of his mother, an internal medicine specialist, and becoming a doctor. “I need human interaction and to feel I am helping people’s lives,” he says. “But I kept up my interest in business, particularly what’s happening in health-related industries.”

Omar’s experience through medical school, residency and medical practice includes research, patient care, managerial and organizational roles. An on-the-job experience at the large University Hospital in Nice, France, opened his eyes to what he might do by complementing his medical expertise with business training.

“I was involved in implementing new nutrition care procedures and policies throughout the hospital,” he explains. “These changes at the organizational level led to better patient care, better patient satisfaction and significant cost savings right from the first year.”

While his parallel role as an emergency room physician enabled him to help individual patients, his work on nutrition policy could positively impact 400,000 patients a year. He realized that the same techniques and energy used could be applied to other contexts, and he was keen for the opportunity to do it on a broader scale.

“By putting my human-based experience together with business knowledge, I can help thousands or millions, rather than just one patient at a time,” he says. “This could be through the pharmaceutical industry, for example, or by consulting on health practice strategy and policy.”

At IMD, Omar is building concrete knowledge in subjects like strategy, finance, process implementation, and company culture and mindset. Though he dealt with these matters in his previous roles, they are not key drivers in patient care settings and not analyzed in-depth.

The human factor, so important to Omar, is not missing from his days at IMD. Indeed, he was drawn to IMD specifically for this reason: “At IMD you are unique. Everyone knows your first name, your birthday, your background. You have this personal attention you cannot get in other programs. It is not a batch production.”

While the program is demanding, he says the challenge is necessary to making it count. And his life experience enables him to approach challenges with a positive attitude. “I have been in more stressful, truly life-and-death situations. It allows me to not get stressed or lose my focus. I can be calm, have insight and make decisions.”

His future plans are not geared towards any one aspect of the healthcare industry. “I see myself as both a doctor and a businessman,” he says. “And ultimately, I would like to be a visionary. I’d like to anticipate future needs in the health system and shape solutions to meet those needs.”