At the root of the transformation occurring in the health care industry—both in the United States and internationally—is the fundamental challenge of improving clinical outcomes while controlling costs. Addressing this challenge will require dramatic improvements in the processes by which care is delivered to patients and the successful adoption of transformative technologies such as digital tools and personalized diagnosis and treatment. This, in turn, will involve fundamentally different approaches to care delivery, the development of new technologies, a rethinking of incentives for stakeholders in the health care system, and a fundamental shift in the roles played by individuals and organizations throughout the sector. While the COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of urgency around many of these topics, they will remain salient issues as the health care system settles into its "new normal" mode of operation. This course will equip students with strategies and tools to help navigate the ever-changing landscape of the health care industry.

Career Focus

This course is appropriate for students interested in understanding the fundamental improvement challenges facing the health care sector and developing strategies for addressing them. Students may have career interests in organizations that provide health care (e.g., hospitals, medical groups, retail clinics) or in firms that partner with, supply, consult to, or invest in such organizations (e.g., payers, biopharmaceutical and device companies, health information technology, venture capital and private equity).

Educational Objectives

This course will help students develop the managerial skills required to identify and implement transformational change. It will draw upon a range of approaches for improving value in healthcare delivery, including continuous improvement, organizational redesign, population health management, precision medicine, patient engagement, digital health, payment reform, and the creation of appropriate incentives for innovation. For each of these approaches, the course will emphasize the importance of identifying improvement opportunities, implementing relevant changes, and measuring their effects on performance.

Course Faculty and Format

The course will be taught by Professor Ariel Stern. Professor Stern is the Poronui Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She studies topics related to the drivers of innovation among health care organizations, firms, and policy makers as well as the determinants underpinning how new medical technologies are adopted and used in practice. She is a faculty affiliate of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science. She has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the German Federal Ministry of Health, and currently advises several private health care companies.

THCD has two components, of which this is the first (Q3):

• A 1.5-credit case-based course covering Q3
• A 1.5-credit field course covering Q4

THCD consists of two halves: a case-based course which can be taken as a stand-alone course in Q3 and a field course built around strategic projects with local Boston-area hospitals that can be taken in Q4. The Q3 class can be taken on its own, but the Q4 class will have Q3 as a prerequisite, so a student can either enroll as a full-semester course (Q3 + Q4) or during Q3 only.

Typically, students in THCD have formed a close-knit community to support each other's interests in learning more about the health care industry. To that end, Professor Stern will host optional, small-group "coffee chats" about current topics in health care.

Course Content and Organization

The Q3 course includes 14 in-class sessions, which are organized into the following three modules:

• Module 1— Information, Value, and Redesigning Payment: This module will present components of the value-based health care framework, including the integration of care delivery around specific medical conditions, using new tools to drive patient-centered care, payment reform, and the management of population health.
• Module 2— Supporting Health Care's Digital Transformation: This module will consider both the value proposition and the key challenges associated with digital health, including considering new digital approaches in hospitals, disease management programs, telemedicine, and surgery.
• Module 3— Operationalizing Personalized and Precision Medicine: This module will examine new technologies associated with more personalized care and explore the implications of these new technologies for health care delivery organizations, payers, and companies working at the forefront of new product development.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation, a brief in-class presentation, and a final project that involves developing a short case that applies course themes to a specific organization. These projects will be completed in teams of 2-3 students. Teams will be able to select their own organizations to study and will receive further guidance from Professor Stern early in the quarter.

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