Design Health Program

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 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. 

Prospective participants in the Fellows program should be willing to commit five to ten hours each week. Participants will receive coaching from experts in medicine, innovation and product development processes, entrepreneurship and engineering both internal and external to Duke. Individuals should not enter the program with a specific need or solution in mind; they must be willing to explore several opportunities through a structured discovery process. Fellows will participate in some or all of the following courses:

In Design Health 1: Discover (FALL), fellows focus on aspects of upstream marketing, particularly needs-finding in the clinical environment using tools such as observational research and interviewing. Students work closely with Duke University Health System staff and may participate in needs-finding in the hospital environment; as such hospital policies around vaccinations, safety & confidentiality training will be required. Students participating in DH1 will need to be in the Durham area for clinical observations. 
 
In Design Health 2: Design (SPRING), fellows take the validated, unmet needs found in Design Health 1 and generate solutions/concepts to meet these needs. Fellows engage in prototyping products and business models, and learn the basics of IP, regulatory, clinical, and manufacturing strategies.
 
In Design Health 3: Deploy (FALL), fellows work on a need and solution that has already been identified by an interdisciplinary team. They prototype, refine, and test the solution, and create business strategies to deploy the product into the market. At the end of this course, students will have a product and business plan ready to seek external funding. Clinical observation is not required for this phase, though we do encourage (not require) participants to be in-person to prototype and test the product in our design facilities.