In her human pathology course recently, Rupa Bahri performed her first autopsy. And she has just learnt how to take blood.

These are standard exercises for the average medical student but Ms Bahri is not training to be a doctor. She is a second-year MBA candidate at the US's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, enrolled in Sloan Business School's biomedical enterprise programme (BEP). Ms Bahri, who hopes one day to start a medical device company, says: "The medical community needs business leaders who understand the science - it's a specialised skill set. I don't want to feel alienated [in my career] by scientists and engineers."