Peter Berchtold is Director of the College for Management in Healthcare (College-M), a national institution of management development as well as of research and consulting in health care management. It advises on matters such as intervention design, policy development and managerial development initiatives and its main strength is the interdisciplinary and systemic approach to management training and development. After an academic career in Internal Medicine and Haematology, Peter was until 1998 general manager of the Department of Medicine at the University Hospital in Bern, Switzerland. At College-M, he designs and directs multidisciplinary management programmes for senior health professionals as well as significant research projects such as evaluation of various aspects of (integrated) health care in Switzerland. He is also Assistant Professor at the University of Bern Medical School and Vice-President of the Swiss Patient Organisation SPO.