Business Advancement Center for Health

BACH highlights the value of collaboration among stakeholders and will host roundtables and consortia with industry and community partners, conferences, multi-sector forums, and interdisciplinary student competitions. Past events are also available to watch.

Participatory research projects will engage the community and industry, along with faculty and students. This ecosystem will complement Carlson School coursework, expose students to state-of-the-art thinking, and engage faculty in innovative real-world health sector solutions.

Bridging the intersections of community, industry, and academia, BACH aligns sectors of the health economy to co-create innovative solutions to drive marketplace implementation. Learn more about how your gifts help to support BACH's research and activities for industry professionals and students here. 

On April 9, Convene 2025 brought together nearly 175 leaders from healthcare, business, and technology for a dynamic half-day conference hosted by the Business Advancement Center for Health (BACH) at the Carlson School. This year’s theme—“Responsible AI: High Impact, Low Risk Healthcare”—sparked engaging conversations around ethical innovation, real-world AI applications, and preparing the workforce for an AI-enabled future. Highlights included a keynote by Microsoft’s Dr. David Rhew, a fireside chat with Lou DiLorenzo (pictured) of Deloitte Consulting, expert panels, and vibrant cross-sector collaboration. Miss the conference or want to explore key takeaways, speaker insights, and what’s ahead for Convene 2026?

The Business Advancement Center for Health (BACH) at the University of Minnesota successfully hosted the 6th Annual Interdisciplinary Health Data Competition, bringing together students from across disciplines to explore real-world healthcare challenges through data analysis.  

This year’s competition, themed “Healthcare Provider Deep Dive: Connecting Quality, Payment, and Social Context,” engaged 62 students across 18 interdisciplinary teams from 13 colleges and schools within the University of Minnesota. Each team incorporated perspectives from at least two different schools, reinforcing the competition’s mission to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. Data partner mimilabs provided a curated data set for the teams to analyze.

Four BACH-affiliated researchers have co-authored a pivotal paper titled "Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes," which will be published in the November issue of the American Economic Review—the top-ranked journal in economics. This research offers crucial insights into how credit market frictions can have unintended, far-reaching consequences on health outcomes, exemplifying BACH’s commitment to advancing critical, cross-disciplinary scholarship at the intersection of health and economics.