Overview

Class Central Tips

Through the voices of start-up and product leaders this course makes transparent what it takes to build a digital health product for healthcare customers large and small. It outlines the planning, resources, process, and team needed to get a healthcare technology product from idea to operational at a customer site. Get to know the range of possible software products and team roles associated with them, walk through the healthcare software design process, learn the key steps for healthcare software product planning, and then find out what it takes to deploy at a customer site. Start-up leaders share moments that made them pause, question what they knew, and knowledge they’d bestow on future start-up leaders throughout the course. Product leaders in healthcare reframe the software development process from the perspective of the healthcare industry, a space with unique stakeholders, customers, and users. Leave with a map of how to build technology and a product out of your digital health software concept.

Syllabus

Technology and Product Planning

Healthcare technology is reframed in this module as a product. We begin by exploring product possibilities, acknowledging the hierarchy, types, and care categories these products can touch. An overview of roles in creating healthcare products follows. Digital Health start-up leaders also introduce their stories and talk about early product strategy, including an approach to scaling and when to pivot. This week also includes an introduction to human-centered healthcare technology design for products.

Design Thinking for Healthcare Software

Use this module to design your healthcare technology by following the major steps of the design thinking process with modifications for digital health. Find out about design research techniques that are applicable to healthcare products, add activities to your toolkit for synthesizing research and brainstorming with a product team, explore the patterns and process behind wireframing digital health applications, and prepare to prototype your technology. This week will leave you with a design plan to get your digital health product ideas out of your head and on paper.

Digital Health Product Planning

This module will take you through the key steps for before, during, and after development of your digital health product with a software team. Start by learning how to identify healthcare stakeholders and map them with a product team. Discover project management methods for agile software development and explore the tools behind them. Walk through a project plan and creating user stories for your software development team, and see what it takes to prepare for deployment of your technology at a customer site.

Planning for Integration and Implementation with a Customer

Hear from three start-up leaders as they talk through challenges and approaches to implementing their technology with a customer. This module presents the different challenges of working with large and small health system customers, moving from one-to-many customers, evaluating your technology medically, and integrating your technology with existing systems. Find out electronic medical integration, and how to avoid common roadblocks when implementing your technology at a customer site.