Curriculum
The curriculum for Penn’s Graduate Certificate in Health Care Innovation online program helps students explore specialized topics that contribute to innovating around health care delivery, whether from a clinical, administrative, research, or product perspective. Learn not only how to identify and address the challenges around you but also how to shape what’s ahead.
Health Care Innovation courses are designed with a similar structure to enhance learning new knowledge, skills, and practices. The primary course activities include:
- Engaging with content and media — Brief, high-quality video lectures; interview cases; cutting-edge readings; and learning aids, many of them downloadable, are predictably structured in weekly modules for you to study on your own schedule.
- Interacting with classmates, faculty, and the course team — During live class meetings and asynchronous class time, you will synthesize knowledge, explore scenarios and cases, identify opportunities for innovation, and network with colleagues.
- Applying your learning — Practice activities, ongoing projects, and presentations help you hone your ideas, identify stakeholders and decision makers, develop strategies for persuasion and negotiation, and strengthen your arguments in a safe, supportive space.
Courses from the Master of Health Care Innovation curriculum may be taken individually. Select four courses from the list below to build your own Graduate Certificate in Health Care Innovation. Click on course title for more detail.
FALL
THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
Survey the complex background of the American health care system, how it shapes the present, and where it offers opportunities for innovation in health care policy, payment, quality, and access moving forward.
BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS AND DECISION MAKING
Examine the key concepts of behavioral economics—including how people’s actions and biases influence their health behaviors—and methods such as designing choices environments or incentive programs that nudge people to increase treatment adherence, reduce costs, and shape wellness behaviors.
CONNECTED HEALTH CARE
Explore connected strategies, frameworks, and delivery models to improve outcomes and competitive advantage, then apply them to creating a roadmap for your own organization or service.
DIGITAL HEALTH
Examine how electronic health systems work, humans in the AI loop, patients and their data, and the types, sources, ethics, and regulation of data.
HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS
Examine inefficiencies resulting from waste, variability, and inflexibility, and acquire methods to engage in the ongoing process of reducing these negative impacts without sacrificing quality of care.
TRANSLATING IDEAS INTO OUTCOMES
Apply analytical and design thinking as this course guides you through developing innovation projects—generating ideas, defining problems, testing, and preparing for delivery—and defining strategies to solve health care problems.
SPRING
HEALTH ECONOMICS
Survey the critical economic issues in producing, delivering, and financing health care, such as demand for medical care, the role of physicians in resource allocation, health insurance, and competition in medical care markets.
LEADERSHIP AND LEGAL ISSUES IN HEALTH CARE
Survey the leadership skills and legal knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of the health care industry at the highest levels.
LEADING CHANGE IN HEALTH CARE
Explore transformative practices in health care, the leadership techniques that have led to their success, and ways to direct change within your organization.
USING DATA FOR TRANSFORMATION
Explore how to turn routine health care data into an algorithm, evaluate the validity of AI products, and understand liability and policy implications around algorithms in health care.
VALUE AND QUALITY IN HEALTH CARE
Discover the most pressing areas of opportunity for health care innovation by applying quality and measurement tools, and how to leverage quality improvement initiatives to drive value.
SUMMER
ADVANCING HEALTH EQUITY
Explore the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in health care organizations, clinical spaces, and affected communities, and contribute to advancing health equity through evidence-based frameworks, tools, and techniques that promote equitable and sustainable implementation of new initiatives.