Special Problems: Re-imaging Healthcare

Instructor

Suzanne El-Moursi

At the core of the practice of medicine are interactions between patients and providers, including diagnosis, treatment, and patient management. Medicine has been advanced in these areas through the methodologies of basic science and translational research.
We are in a time where advancements in healthcare technologies have become so complex, with focus on diagnosing and treating disease that we've failed to keep the human aspect. Some facts about the healthcare industry are:
o The healthcare industry is a $1.9 trillion industry in the USA.
o More than 40 million people do not have any health insurance.
o Private-sector spending on health care R&D –in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and health services – runs into the billions of dollars.
o Despite this enormous investment in innovation and the magnitude of the opportunity for innovators to both do good and do well, all too many efforts fail, losing billions of investor dollars along the way.

So why is innovation so unsuccessful in health care?

Transforming and improving the health care system and the technologies needed to support it requires us to apply design thinking to this complex space and understand the current day needs of the main players: the patients, general physicians, specialized physicians, clinical technologists and nurses. To succeed in the redesign of our healthcare system, vendor companies have to focus their efforts outside their company culture and focus on the environments and users of their products and take this insight into their product development processes.

During this course, designers and researchers will increase their understanding of the complex healthcare industry through reading weekly literature and formulating their reactions, impressions and opinions by preparing for weekly class discussion. This course will be an interactive seminar where rich, interactive dialogue will take place, allowing students to gain an understanding of the current system challenges, the various arguments on "what the future of health care should be, and current need for personalized health medicine so they are able to formulate their own insight and imagine a future model/vision. Industry speakers will be invited when available to help lead and contribute to the dialogue.

The required text is: "Harvard Business Review on Managing Health Care" - ISBN 978-1-4221-2107-8.

Format & Grading

The format of this course will be interactive, rich dialogue, where students will be encouraged to share their ideas and opinions with the class. The scope is to simply gain enough understanding to begin scratching the surface of this topic. Students should expect to walk away from this course with a new set of data to either continue researching this topic on their own or have enough understanding to engage in dialogues with others interested in the topic.

The goal will be to:
-share our reactions and ideas on the many different arguments and published literature on the topic.
-challenge each other's thinking and leading a constructive and healthy debate on the topic.
-imagine, individually and collectively, a new health care system that focuses on serving the needs of human beings.
-work in small teams, having fun and walking away inspired at the end of the course!

Industry speakers will be invited when available to help lead and contribute to the dialogue. The instructor is focused on creating a rich discussion among curious minds!

1) 50% class participation
2) 30% weekly assignments - Individual papers on the weekly assigned
reading. These are short papers (2-4 pages).
3) 20% final project - Completed in pairs of two.