Introduction to Digital Health Entrepreneurship

Overview

This course will provide an overview of digital health entrepreneurship with an initial emphasis on learning the basic digital health terminology, exploring a current example of telemedicine and its growth during the COVID pandemic, and gaining an understanding of the landscape and macro forces that affect the US healthcare system and the evolution of digital health. Students who successfully complete the course will understand the impact that payers, regulators, clinicians, and patients have on and the implications for digital health innovations.

Syllabus

Overview and Introduction to Digital Health Entrepreneurship

In this module, you will gain insight into the scope and areas covered by digital health. We will explore and differentiate digital health subgroups of digital medicine and digital therapeutics and their importance to digital health and the practice of medicine. Then we explore in more detail the importance that digital health can have on the health care industry and the types of technologies and innovations driving change. Finally, we will look at telemedicine as a critical example of a digital health technology that has rapidly changed health care and how its adoption was accelerated by the COVID pandemic. All of this will be critical to your understanding and ability to examine opportunities in digital health as an entrepreneur.

The Digital Health Landscape

In this module, you will gain insight into the environmental conditions shaping the digital health landscape. We will first understand the macro trends impacting the U.S. healthcare system. Then you will learn from industry voices to better contextualize these trends from the perspective of the healthcare customer. You will then gain exposure to the foundations of financing mechanisms and public and private payment models. All of this will be critical to your understanding of what the opportunities are emerging as part of the next generation of digitally enabled healthcare.

Improving Population Health: The Objective of Digital Health Innovation

Building on your understanding of the macro environment in which digital health must operate, this module will explore the nuances of exactly what challenges our healthcare system is trying to solve and the role that digital health solutions can play. Using population health as a guiding framework, you be guided through key areas of unmet needs and examples of implementation challenges. Tying it all together, you will learn from examples of how certain health technology companies are tackling some of these challenges and the importance of developing data-driven strategies.