Fron­ti­ers of Di­git­al Health­care

Fagets indhold

This course aims to deliver participants from various backgrounds with insights into the latest developments, technologies, and trends at the frontier of digital healthcare innovation.

Digital technology innovations are poised to disrupt the healthcare landscape, a sector which has often been thought of as one of the least digitized industries. Omnipresent trends in the likes of online social communities, ubiquitous mobile devices, and the surge of smart sensor technologies, have culminated in the exponential growth of available data that bear significant implications for healthcare provision. Additionally, advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, machine learning, and other technologies have created unprecedented opportunities for harvesting, storing, processing, and utilizing these massive data repositories, for the benefit of patients, healthcare providers, and other stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

A burgeoning number of healthcare startups are currently aiming to disrupt the traditional model in which healthcare services are provided by exploiting advances in digital technologies to assist patients and healthcare professionals at the point of care. At the same time, incumbent players in the healthcare industry (e.g., healthcare providers, pharmaceutical firms, and insurers) as well as information technology and AI leading companies  are pushing forward to foster digital innovation under the roof of their own established business models. From a societal standpoint, digital innovations deliver enormous opportunities to bolster the chances of achieving the triple mission of higher quality, lower cost, and better access to healthcare systems worldwide.

With digital innovations holding the promise of resolving focal challenges in healthcare, healthcare is transforming into a vibrant space. Governmental institutions, incumbent players, and techological startups are currently seeking much-needed talent that comprehends digitalization trends and is able to turn health data into information pertinent to tackling contemporary problems in the field of healthcare.

This course is designed to acquaint participants with the latest technological developments and trends at the frontier of digital healthcare innovation, providing participants with hands-on experience on analyzing and exploiting health data in a real-world setting. Over the duration of this course, we will cover trends in digital healthcare innovation, including: big data, cognitive computing, machine learning, wearables, as well as mobile and social platforms. For each of these trends, we will not only drill into its underlying conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations, but we will also touch on concrete application scenarios and business cases across different healthcare system contexts.

In parallel to these conceptual elements, course participants will acquire and apply basic machine learning techniques to tackle contemporary problems in healthcare. In the exercises there will be hands-on instructions and guidance provided. 

The acitivities in the exercises is the foundation for the written product that will be handed-in as foundation for the oral exam. In the project there will be a strong foundation in the readings in the course and applied machine learning.  Students can use their own data-set or use a data-set provided by the course teacher. The written product could serve as an explorative study of the possible master thesis focus.. At Canvas, there will be provided detailed guidelines for the written product, including clear and transparent guidelines for the expected content of the written product. The gudielines will be posted prior to course-start.