The first-year “required curriculum” (RC) incorporates health care cases and topics in many courses ranging from Marketing and Finance to Entrepreneurship and Strategy. Roughly ten percent of the cases covered in the RC year span the many sectors of the health care industry. This ensures that all students will understand the industry from various functional perspectives.
During the second-year "elective curriculum" (EC), students may choose courses and field-based research specific to their particular health care interests. Some students also choose to cross-register for health care courses at other schools within the Harvard University community.
Elective Courses
Elective health care-focused courses will vary from year to year. Upcoming HBS course offerings include:
The Lab to Market field course outlines the path from embryonic discoveries made in R&D labs to their development for commercial use and onwards to market launch. The course is designed for students who either want to start businesses that have science and technology intellectual property at their core or anticipate leading market launch teams in incumbent organizations. The course covers such issues as creating value from science and technology innovations, business model design, value capture strategies, portfolio strategy, regulation, financing, intellectual property and organizational models of science- and technology-based ventures.
Course Catalog Listing
This course is intended for students who are interested in careers in financing, leading ,or creating innovative health care services, health insurance, health IT, or medical technology. Student teams meet with Prof. Herzlinger on a biweekly basis. All students must complete a business plan.
Course Catalog Listing
(IHC) helps students create successful entrepreneurial health care ventures by enabling them to:
- Identify the alignment between an entrepreneurial health care venture and the Six Forces that shape health care: structure, financing, technology, consumers, accountability, and public policy.
- Create a business model that responds appropriately to any misalignments.
This Course embraces every part of the health care sector. It also has a global focus, with case studies set in Brazil, India, Spain, the UK, and the US, among other countries. Additionally, IHC provides an analytic framework that shapes new health care ventures and exposes students to different kinds of innovation in health care.
Course Catalog Listing
This course will help students develop the managerial skills required to identify and implement change. It will draw upon a range of approaches for improving healthcare delivery, including the value-based health care framework, continuous improvement, organizational redesign, population health management, precision medicine, patient engagement, and payment reform. For each of these approaches, the course will emphasize the importance of identifying improvement targets, implementing relevant changes, and measuring their effects on performance.
Course Catalog Listing
Many health care organizations lack a coherent business strategy. How can firms create and capture value in this complicated, heavily regulated industry? There are serious fiscal challenges ahead if spending growth is not permanently curtailed, yet substantial opportunities exist to enhance efficiency and quality. This course covers the components of sound strategy and different industrial, institutional, and regulatory challenges across a range of health care sectors.
Students learn about several key health care sectors. The emphasis will be on payors and providers, but the course will also devote 15-20% of the case discussions to drugs and devices (which comprise about that share of health care spending). hroughout the course, discussions will cover U.S. health care reform and its implications on the various industry sectors.
Course Catalog Listing
Students may earn academic credit by working independently or in teams as they conduct research and complete projects for health care organizations. This student-initiated learning enables students to choose their faculty sponsor and the organization where they will work.
Recent projects include:
- Quantifying the size of the medical tourism market
- Identifying applications for multiplex protein analysis techniques
- Evaluating IT strategies for a startup health care organization
- Redesigning urgent care triage for a major academic hospital
- Developing a China business model for a large pharmaceutical company
CROSS-REGISTRATION
HBS students may take graduate-level courses at several other schools within Harvard University. Courses at the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School are popular.