Teaching Team: all, including Prof. Herzlinger, are successful health care entrepreneurs

University of Miami Professor of Orthopedics and Bioengineering, Lee Kaplan, MD
Visiting Lecturer Ben Creo, M.Div.
Executive Fellow Brian Walker, MPH , Ph.D. in women’s health

Overview

The opportunity to innovate in the healthcare sector is enormous. Although it is the country’s largest sector and we have excellent resources and people, it remains too costly, too inaccessible, and too fragmented. Countless important technology innovations lie fallow. Substantial opportunities to do good and do well remain in the rest of the world as well.

Innovating in Health Care contains the analytic framework for students who want to innovate the sector. It is entirely taught through current field-based case studies of health care innovations. Innovating in Health Care (Q1) is the prerequisite for the next two field courses, Field Course: Business Plans for Innovating in Health Care, (Q2) and Field Course: Advanced Business Plans for Innovating in Health Care (Q3,Q4) that culminate in students’ either obtaining funding their business plan or customers.

In 2025, teams obtained $5 million in seed funding and won the HBS Shark Tank prize; Grand Prize of the Social Enterprise track at the New Ventures Competition; the iF Gold Design Award; and a Blavatnik Fellowship. Another team launched its AI innovation in thirty clinics.

The course begins with case studies of how to evaluate the viability of an innovation. Successive modules contain case studies, and related text, of how to start, scale, and exit an innovation. The CEOs of the firms depicted typically attend the class and often function as mentors/advisors in the subsequent two field courses. The case studies cover virtually all health care verticals. These sessions are complemented with optional panel sessions on developments in topics such as health care AI; reimbursement; and regulation.

A diverse teaching team brings their wide-ranging experience across a variety of health care verticals. Their frequent comments and interactions with you on your progress in developing a business plan for a healthcare innovation combines their substantial experience with a practical focus and the latest cutting-edge research.

Alumni from this course have become leaders or founders of major health care firms , health care strategics, and accomplished health care investors. These alumni and other experts often contribute their experience to the case discussions in the course and continue the interaction with those students who subsequently enroll in the related Field courses.

The students are drawn from HBS and other HU schools such as design/engineering, government, law, medicine, and public health. These students often form a synergistic lifelong professional network.

Course Requirements

Employing the framework taught in this course, students prepare a business plan to create an entrepreneurial opportunity in health care. The course offers advisers from other HU schools—HMS, SEAS, HLS, SPH, CS; established health care firms; legal/regulatory/reimbursement experts; and VC/PE investors. Students may already have begun a startup, form teams with other students in the class, or create an entirely new project in the course.

Some ideas for projects are posted on the course platform, but you can devise your own project, as well, after the Teaching Team approves it. MBA students frequently form teams with fellow MBAs and cross registrants. A fair number continue as ongoing businesses (see, for example, the Phreesia (PHR) case study).

Grading

Class participation , support of fellow students, and the business plan will account for a significant percentage of the grade.

Students are reminded of the Class Absence and Remote Attendance Policy

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