Biodesign Innovation Course
Student Experiences
The primary goal of the Stanford Biodesign Innovation course is to teach students a proven, repeatable approach to innovation that they can apply in any technology domain. Many class alumni end up pursuing healthcare careers and report finding the process valuable whether they’re designing medical products, driving innovation inside a major device corporation, working inside a provider organization, making life science investments, or starting-up their own health technology company. Read more about student experiences below, and learn about additional start-ups launched out of the Biodesign Innovation course on our Companies page.
Project Spotlight
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From Need to Reimbursed Technology: Lessons from an 11-Year Journey
After completing the Biodesign Innovation course, Miles Rosen and Steve Herbowy set out to address the unmet need of fecal incontinence. Little did they know, it would take 11 years to develop their technology and pave the way for its widespread adoption. Reimbursement proved to be a particularly challenging hurdle on the path to market. In this story, Rosen shares lessons learned on the journey to securing reimbursement coverage.
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Osmind: Building a Platform for Breakthrough Mental Health
With Osmind, Stanford Biodesign student Lucia Huang and her co-founder Jimmy Qian used need-driven innovation principles to create an electronic health records system that allows psychiatrists to provide better treatment to individual patients while also collecting real-world data to advance the state of care more broadly.
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It Takes a University: How a Determined Team Developed a Technology to Protect Vulnerable Newborns
Too often in the health field, new technologies that could substantially improve care never make it to patients because the market is small and the economics don’t support the high cost of developing, testing, and manufacturing a new device. But, by leveraging resources from across Stanford University, a team of innovators found a way to bring one such technology forward that could improve the odds for critically ill babies.
What Students Are Saying…
“I learned an amazing amount and was bedazzled by the breadth and sophistication of the Biodesign process. I am truly grateful to have been exposed to your terrific teaching team. They were all fantastic. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, you managed to overcome the limitations of the virtual classroom to keep things interesting and engaging.”
“Biodesign Innovation allowed me to understand everything possible about the medtech industry. I felt empowered to co-found a medical device start-up (an offshoot of the Biodesign class itself). I would not have been able to do it without taking the class. The teaching, professors, guest speakers, and the intellectual rigor in the class is very inspiring.”
“The Biodesign Innovation course was one of the top academic experiences that I had at Stanford, hands down, across schools and across my undergraduate and graduate studies... an exceptionally thoughtful, thorough, and high-quality curriculum that taught while also inspiring and energizing.”
“There are very few courses like this, where you get the opportunity to work in a team alongside doctors, business students, and engineers. You also get to interact with amazing coaches and industry experts, and you learn everything from how to file a patent to how to make a successful prototype. Would HIGHLY recommend it.”
“It was just amazing the amount of support and resources provided through the Biodesign Innovation class. It’s more than just a class, it’s like joining a network…or being a part of something much bigger.”