Innovative Problem Solving & Design Thinking in Healthcare

HPM 282 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Innovative problem solving is a critical skill for healthcare leaders confronting disruptive change and operating in increasingly complex and fast-paced environments. The capacity to innovate is essential to effectively serving patients, improving outcomes and developing sustainable organizations. Design thinking is a disciplined approach to innovation that focuses intensely on the intersection of human needs and values, technical feasibility and strategic viability to create end-user value and pursue market opportunity. Healthcare organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as well as Ministries of Health in many countries have turned to design thinking to improve patient care and citizen health.

In contrast to a traditional approach to problem solving that focuses on deciding among known solutions, an innovative approach seeks the best solution possible given available resources, time, and team competencies. Innovative problem solving maximizes learning to reduce uncertainty by focusing on generation of new alternatives, experimentation, and exploration of multiple solutions.

Learning will occur through a mix of individual and group exercises in class as well as a series of graded and ungraded assignments that enable you to effectively use innovation tools, acquire skills, and adopt mindsets that complement the analytical approaches you have developed in other courses.

Course Note:This course will be taught at the Harvard iLab.