Providing cutting edge medical care requires physicians to do more than provide care to patients at the bedside or in the operating room. To truly advance health care for patients, physicians must engage in bringing valuable ideas from conception to execution. This may sometimes mean organizing and leading a health care team to treat a disease. At other times, it could mean working with health care organizations to improve the value of care we provide by changing systems to become better stewards of healthcare resources. It could also mean identifying a potential medical need and developing a product or device to address it.
The Innovation Pathway is designed to help students experience ways in which the techniques of ideation, valuation, implementation and leadership all pair with excellent clinical skills to create advances in medicine that further improve the care we can provide patients. Through a balanced combination of didactics, discussions and experiential learning opportunities, the pathway will introduce students to the foundations of innovative thought and provide the skills necessary to use these approaches throughout their careers. Opportunities to learn from and interact with leaders and innovators in areas of hospital leadership, payers, healthcare-related business and startup companies will span across the curriculum. In addition, students interested in pursuing a dual MD/MBA will find mentorship and guidance available to help them meet this goal.
