doctors looking at untrasound

Discover. Design. Deploy.

Overview of Duke Design Health

The Design Health Program is a patient-centered initiative that uncovers critical healthcare needs and brings together teams from engineering, business, medicine, nursing, and other disciplines. The program offers two tracks: The Design Health Workshop and the Design Health Fellows Program. 

The Design Health Workshop is open to the entire Duke community and teaches principles of interdisciplinary design in medicine. Classes meet weekly on Wednesday nights from 6:15pm to 8:15pm during the fall semester (Aug-Nov). Students, faculty, and staff, are assembled into interdisciplinary teams during each class.  These teams are taught the process of innovation and then work through real-world examples of needs identification, concept development, and implementation strategies. At the end of the semester, participants are challenged to find their own clinical need and develop a concept to pitch to the class. If participants desire, they can apply to the Design Health Fellows program to continue their learning. Enrolled students can receive credit for participation through BME 590 or I&E 590 (both 0.5 undergraduate credits, 1.5 graduate credits).

The Design Health Fellows Program is an application-only, three-semester program for currently enrolled graduate students. In the first semester, Design Health Fellows attend the Design Health Workshop on Wednesday nights (above) and also meet on Mondays from 10am to 1pm to participate in clinical immersion. In partnership with the School of Medicine and School of Nursing, Fellows gather data and insight into the clinical environment and use structured ethnography tools to identify unmet, underserved, and unarticulated needs. In the second semester, they generate concepts and build prototypes to create products that meet these needs. In the third and final semester, they consult with industry professionals to develop manufacturing, clinical, quality, legal, and financial strategies to commercialize their products. This program is limited to students in the BME Medtech Design Track/Certificate, and those that are selected through an application process (who in most cases will have completed Design Health Workshop). Enrolled students can receive credit for participation each semester through BME 773-775, I&E 720-722, HLTHMGMT 898, and/or INTERDISC 407C. 

 

Introducing the Program

The Design Health Program provides an immersive learning experience where teams don’t solve pre-defined problems, but actively identify, validate and prioritize problems that will impact human health.