Description
The past 20 years have seen an incredible amount of high-tech medical advances,
but to what degree have these impacted the health of those living in the developing
world? The potential for years of life gained through biomedical technology is tremendous
in some of the world’s poorest regions, but appropriate design requires an
understanding of the clinical, political, and cultural landscape, and a clean-slate
approach to developing low-cost, effective tech.
This course offers an exciting opportunity to understand how to design solutions
for the most important health challenges of the developing world. Learning goals
will be achieved through hands-on experience, including: a laboratory component
where we deconstruct, design and build a low-cost medical device, case study discussions
on successful global health innovations, and several “teardowns” of common
medical devices. Lecturers from Thayer, Tuck School of Business, the Dartmouth
Center for Health Care Delivery Science, and Geisel School of Medicine will cover
complimentary topics in clinical medicine, healthcare delivery, innovation and
medical imaging. A final project will bring everything together by addressing a real
health problem with a prototype of a low-cost tech solution. Enrollment is limited
to 40 students.