Problems with health care quality, access, and costs bedevil all countries. This course focuses on the creation of a business plan for a global business innovation in health care that can better meet these needs. Students generally already have ideas for business plans that they want to pursue.

Innovating in Health Care (IHC) enables students to create successful entrepreneurial health care ventures that respond to the massive opportunities created by the escalating cost and uneven quality and access of health care systems globally. Students prepare a business plan, which uses the framework of this course, for an organization that innovates health care delivery, technology, insurance, and consumer-facing options.

This course has been specifically designed for students who are considering founding or joining life sciences ventures upon, or soon after, graduation. While the course is focused on the life sciences, students need not have a scientific background, merely a passion for making an impact through participation in these ventures. Students will explore opportunities along various aspects of the R&D and commercialization lifecycle, along science, clinical, regulatory and commercial areas of the lifecycle.

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).

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.

This course will introduce participants to the key strategic problems facing health care businesses, and will illustrate how strategic principles can be applied in health care settings to identify sources of competitive advantage (and all too often, disadvantage). Our emphasis will be on payers and providers, but we will also devote 20-25% of our case discussions to prescription drugs. Throughout, we will also discuss the role of U.S. regulations and policies on organizational strategies and market outcomes.

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

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.

For students who don’t know anything about the industry but want to understand what the front-page articles are all about. We will assume no prior knowledge of the underlying science or of this industry. It’s also for students interested in the life-sciences industry and in medicine, and for students interested in venture. Most of all, it’s for anyone who cares about patients and their wellbeing. So whether you plan to lead a large biotech company or work for a non-health care company, you will need to know more about this pervasive industry.

This course is the premier value-based health care course geared toward executive management and physician leaders from health care delivery organizations, health insurers and government. It assembles a group of senior U.S. and international health care leaders to examine new strategies, organizational models and measurement approaches to drive value improvement in health care delivery. The program includes three days of intensive Harvard Business School–style case discussions, guest protagonists, and concept presentations to discuss the value-based health care framework and its application.

This course will shed light on the process of investing in life sciences, more broadly: the valuation of early and later stage biopharma companies and the approaches to combat both common diseases, like heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, and rarer ones, like cystic fibrosis. A goal of the program is to draw out some key debates that are more broadly relevant to life sciences, such as: the value of early detection, the pricing of life saving drugs, the incentives for innovation, and the speed of FDA approval.