General provisions

The course targets both professionals and students at all disciplines. Ideally the course would consist of a mix of people with clinical background, relevant technical background (e.g. software developer, health informatician or computer science), and people with lived experience of being a patient and/or informal caregiver.

Entry requirements

120 credits. Proficiency in English equivalent to the Swedish upper secondary course English 6.

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing in-depth knowledge about digital health innovation based on the needs of patients, family caregivers and healthcare professionals. Interdisciplinary teams of course participants will identify needs-based problems and in dialogue with target groups develop solutions for identified problems. Feedback on process and proposed solutions are given by teachers and mentors, course participants (peer learning) and the potential end-users.

The starting point will be concrete and real needs of patients, informal caregivers, and healthcare professionals.

After the course, the student should be able to:

Knowledge and understanding​

• Identify problems and challenges in health and care based on relevant conditions.
• Describe and explain principles of user-focused methodology and interdisciplinary collaboration in planning and executing innovation projects with a focus on digital health.

Competence and skills

• Independently identify problems and challenges in health and care and formulate solutions within the framework of digital health.
• Plan, structure, execute and report innovation projects within given timeframes, focusing on user needs and creative methods.

Judgment and approach

• Describe and evaluate the importance of interdisciplinary groups' contributions to the development of innovation projects.
• Demonstrate a conscious and user-centered approach in implementing projects focused on digital health.

Content

With the citizen's needs in focus and gained knowledge about digital health i, the course participants identify, plan, carries through and evaluate a relevant health innovation project. As support for the work, theory and practical introduction about methods on how to co-create with the intended user of the innovation solution are provided. Theoretical discussions are combined with practical work on how to energize creativity in innovative processes and how project groups can enable productive collaboration. Ideas are tested through meetings with needs-providers, mentors from innovation support organisations and the final solutions is presented to a panel of evaluators and end-users.

Instruction

Lectures, seminars, project work in teams. Teaching is online and in English. Mandatory parts consists of seminars and project work in teams.

Assessment

Approved active participation in mandatory assignments and approved completion of a project according to instructions (4 credits), and approved oral and written report (3.5 credits).

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.