Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

1 session / week, 3 hours / session; the first 90 minutes are lectures and the final 90 minutes are tutorial/practicum sessions

Course Introduction

Background

This innovative course is taught at Harvard Medical School and MIT each spring, beginning its tenth year in February 2009. It is cross-listed in the course catalogues of divisions of both universities, and open to students in all graduate school departments of Harvard and MIT. Residents and fellows at Harvard affiliated hospitals may audit the course. Undergraduates may enroll with the permission of the course director.

Core Concept

Innovation in healthcare requires leaders who are trained to think and act like entrepreneurs. Whether at a hospital bedside, patient's home, or resource-poor region of the U.S. or a developing nation, healthcare leaders must understand both the business of running a healthcare organization and how to provide timely, affordable, quality patent care. Each week, the course features a lecture and skills-based tutorial session led by an industry or academic leader. The lecture provides the foundation for faculty-mentored work on industry, student, or non-profit sponsored projects that may involve creation of a market or business plan, product development, or a study design.

Interdisciplinary Faculty

Faculty, guest speaker, and project mentor biographies

The core faculty team brings to the students a complementary set of experiences and skill sets that create a mentoring environment and 'think tank' like incubator experience that promotes creative idea generation and provides a comprehensive perspective for evaluating the evolving healthcare and biolifescience industry landscape.

The combined faculty's area of expertise encompasses managed care practice, medical/clinical patient care, medical and bioinformatics, consumer health informatics, technology innovation and business operations experience. In addition to the core faculty team, guest faculty from leadership positions from within academics and industry help to guide students and their project ideas with a 'firm feet on the ground' mentality.

Combining the ongoing practice of medicine with working in the business of healthcare, the interdisciplinary faculty and student teams over the last 8 years have worked on projects to develop technology and service based solutions that can make an impact on the contemporary healthcare business environment.

Corporate Partners

We are indebted to our course corporate partners, who provide generous grants to support the student projects this semester.

• Aetna
• Atrius Health
• Cisco Systems
• Intel (Link will open in a new browser window)
• Symantec

Prerequisites

None. This interdisciplinary course is for students interested in strategic development of health-related businesses, outcomes research, and point of care patient services. Students may register from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, The Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Graduate Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education. In addition, undergraduates at MIT and Harvard College are eligible to register with permission.

Objectives

We will show how information technologies (IT) shape and redefine the health care marketplace. Students will learn how IT enhances medical care through:

1. Improved economies of scale,
2. greater technical efficiencies in the delivery of care,
3. advanced tools for patient education and self-care,
4. network-integrated decision support tools for clinicians, and
5. opportunities for e-health delivery over the internet.

Students will work in interdisciplinary teams to design an innovative solution to a current or future health care problem. Students' proposed solutions will draw upon understanding of tools and principles acquired and will be presented as an application design during the final days of the course.

Scope

This interdisciplinary course will teach students how to critique and analyze various management programs and technology systems currently available to health care professionals. Lectures and tutorials will offer didactic and experiential learning opportunities. The tutorials will serve as interactive discussion and training sessions to introduce the skills and software toolsets that will be used by the students to design an original health care delivery system application. Skills will include those used by professionals in health economics, disease management, decision support, clinical effectiveness, and automated clinical trials design.

Mission

To provide a unique learning environment that brings together students and faculty from diverse backgrounds including medicine, business, law, engineering, public health, education, and social policy to harness their creativity and experience for the purpose of enhancing health care delivery.

Teaching Methods

The students will form multidisciplinary groups to analyze, develop, and present a specific disease or clinical management program which will incorporate (but is not limited to) management techniques, services, and technologies as presented during lectures and tutorials. A packet of materials will be distributed at the first tutorial that includes readings, written exercises, and instructions for the computer laboratories.

Grading

Students may elect to take the course on a Pass-Fail basis with permission from the Registrar for their academic programs.

Oral Presentation

The oral presentation and the written final report will be reviewed by the course director, co-directors, tutors/supervisors, and lecturers. These group-based assessments will be combined with an individual assessment to determine the final grade.

Project Milestones

Teams will be given an opportunity to practice their presentation skills and polish their project objectives through 3 in-class mini-presentations. Two of them will require the preparation of a 10-minute presentation on a specific topic related to the project, and one will be an elevator pitch that is delivered to an actual venture capitalist, for which the teams will receive feedback.

Calendar