Case Study: Innovation in Health: Foundations of Design Thinking & Equity-centered Design

1 Course Unit

Innovation, defined as a hypothesis-driven, testable, and disciplined strategy, is important to improve health & healthcare. Employing new ways of thinking, such as with design thinking, will help open up possibilities of ways to improve health & the process of healthcare. Additionally, equity-centered design integrates features of design thinking with a focus on how the design process impacts the end-users and requires the inclusion of under-resourced communities throughout the design process to ensure that the power differences that lead to oppression, marginalization, and health inequity are removed (Equity Design Thinking, 2022). Incorporating current & emerging social & digital technologies such as mobile apps, wearables, remote sensing, and 3D printing, affords new opportunities for innovation. This course provides foundational content & a disciplined approach to innovation as it applies to health, healthcare, public health and health equity. A flipped classroom approach has the in-class component focusing on group learning through design thinking activities. The course is open to undergraduate nursing students as a case study & upper-level undergraduates and graduate students from across the Penn campus. The course provides a theoretical foundation in design thinking and equity-centered design along with a focus on using a Design Justice lens and the importance of storytelling. To enhance the didactic component, students will actively participate in a design case study. Students will be matched by interest and skill level with teams & will work with community-based organizations, healthcare providers and/or innovation partners. Student teams will meet their partners to identify & refine a health, healthcare, public health or health equity problem to tackle. Students will work throughout the semester to create an innovative solution that will be pitched to their community-based organization, healthcare provider, and/ or innovation partner at the end of the semester. Prerequiste: Completion of freshman & sophomore level courses. This is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course. Fall or Spring Mutually Exclusive: NURS 5730 1 Course Unit