New elective prepares students for the healthcare system of the future
How do you create innovation that benefits patients and citizens – and what do healthcare professionals actually need to know to contribute? These are some of the questions a new interdisciplinary elective course, Healthy Innovation, gives students the opportunity to explore.
Bachelor’s students from Odontology, Sports Science and Medicine will have the chance to deepen their understanding of health innovation when the new interdisciplinary elective Healthy Innovation launches this autumn.
Healthy Innovation is the result of collaboration across the faculty and the university’s start-up hub, The Kitchen. It has been developed to better equip students for a changing healthcare sector, explains Sys Zoffmann Glud, Managing Director of the Biomedical Design innovation unit at the Department of Clinical Medicine and chair of the working group behind designing the course.
“We want to show students how their healthcare knowledge and collaboration skills can become a driving force for innovation that creates real value for citizens, society and themselves,” says Sys Zoffmann Glud.
The course offers a broad introduction to innovation in the healthcare sector and civil society – with a particular focus on how innovation develops in practice and through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Students will gain experience with selected innovation methods and work with real-life cases.
“It’s about making innovation tangible. We work with cases that give students insight into how change actually happens – and how they themselves can contribute in the future,” says Sys Zoffmann Glud.
Innovation across the healthcare landscape
Healthy Innovation has been developed in collaboration with The Kitchen, and the goal of the elective is to provide students not only with an understanding of but also the confidence to think innovatively in their future working lives – whether they end up in the hospital sector, municipal health services or civil society, explains start-up advisor Sebastian Gram Nguyen Rasmussen:
“There’s a particular focus on the early phases of innovation processes and on how healthcare competencies can come into play in interdisciplinary collaboration. The course gives students concrete methods and tools they can carry forward – no matter which role they take on in the health field after graduation,” he says.
The diversity of the course will also be reflected in the teaching team, he adds:
“It will be an interdisciplinary teaching team with varied backgrounds, including health innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition, students will meet guest speakers from the practical field – for example, entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals, all of whom have hands-on experience with innovation in healthcare.”
Sys Zoffmann Glud emphasises that the need for new thinking and innovation is pressing:
“The healthcare system faces a double demographic pressure, with a growing elderly population and smaller youth cohorts. We need employees who can think in creative solutions and contribute to the development and implementation of necessary changes.”
Healthy Innovation is open to all students enrolled in Health’s degree programmes – except for Public Health Science, where electives are not available.
FACTS: Healthy Innovation
The aim of the course is for students to develop knowledge, skills and competencies within innovation, so they are able in their future work to spot new opportunities and apply their healthcare knowledge in innovation processes.
Students will receive instruction in:
- Identifying personal and professional competencies, both individually and in interdisciplinary groups
- Innovation processes and methods, including how research can lead to innovation
- Identifying problems and user needs
- Working with ideas, concepts and sustainable solutions
- Creating and working in interdisciplinary groups
- Assessing the value an innovative solution creates and for whom
- Identifying potential users or buyers
- Identifying the stakeholders involved in a specific issue
The elective runs over eight weeks and is a 5-ECTS course. Read more in the course description:
https://kursuskatalog.au.dk/en/course/135524/Health-Innovation-From-Idea-to-Implementation
Contact
Managing Director BioMedical Design, Sys Zoffmann Glud
Department of Clinical Medicine, Health, Aarhus University
Phone: +4524592667
Mail: sys@clin.au.dk
Start-up advisor Sebastian Gram Nguyen Rasmussen
Enterprise and Innovation, Aarhus University
Phone:+4593508876
Mail: sgnr@au.dk
Vice-Dean of Education, Lise Wogensen Bach
Health, Aarhus University
Phone: +45 25 48 85 22
Mail: lwb@au.dk
This article has been translated using machine translation.