NRSGH Innovation in Global Health - NTNU

NRSGH Innovation in Global Health - NTNU

The aim of the course is to facilitate PhD students in developing their innovation skills in Global health and learn more about the process of innovation.

 

The course is a block-course comprising of one week - digital lectures via Zoom. It will be taught in Autumn 2022, respectively 3th - 7th October (week 40). The course will be taught together with the Master course PH3002. The course is a combination of lectures and group, pair and individual activities; all of which are directly related to the participants’ own contribution. Between sessions, the participants are required to keep in contact with their student colleges and instructor through e-mails, Zoom or Chat. The course will constitute 5 ETCS. All course activities are mandatory and participants must have a presentation at the end of the teaching block. Assessment is “passed/ not passed”.

Muhammad Zaman will be responsible for the course. See the video of one of the innovations that Muhammed Zaman is involved in: PharmaChk: Testing the quality of medicines in the field. 

 

Registration (Please contact NRSGH Coordinator if you are intrested in this course)

Deadline for registration is 10 September, 2022
Remember also to apply in Søknadsweb

This PhD-course is only available for members. Become a member?

Compulsory assignments:
  • Report
  • Final presentation 
  • Home excam

Required previous knowledge: 

The course is open to PhD candidates who are members of the Norwegian Research School of Global health (NRSGH). If you are not a member but admitted to a relevant PhD-program, please contact NRSGH coordinator. Exchange students may be accepted after an individual evaluation.
Academic content: 

Technology and innovation is an integral part of healthcare, in both developing and developed countries. While understanding key concepts of epidemiology, health management and statistics are common topics to the study of Global Health, few courses focus on the importance of technology and innovation, its history, its present and future, and its inherent challenges. The course NRS8003 will introduce the key concepts of technology and innovation in global health, in an interactive way, using examples that have been successfully implemented, and those that have failed. We will analyze the key attributes of design, success and failures of technology in this course.

The course will focus on the process of technology, development, design, optimization and implementation in low and middle income countries. We will also focus on when and why technology is needed, when it is necessary, and what information it can and cannot provide. In that regard, issues of ethics will also come into play. In addition, the course will analyze the history of technology in global health, the current state of technology and what the future technological needs may be.

Broadly speaking, we will focus on three kinds of technologies: 
1) successful examples of technology implementation 
2) near-misses and
3) those that failed despite showing promise in early/ prototype stages.

These lessons will guide the framework of our discussion about the need and the future of the technologies. Finally, we will also study the current bottlenecks, including social, technological and financial, that may hinder technology development and adoption in resource limited settings. 
Course material:  Course literature will be announced at the start of the semester.
Teaching methods and activities:

This course will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on lectures, discussion and case studies. The second part will focus on team work, focused around a single technology per team (of 3-4 students), that will analyze a technology in progress of implementation or a technology that is in early stage of development. The students will be required to come up with a forecast for the future of the technology in terms of the scope, focus and pathway to implementation. Students will analyze whether the technology they are analyzing is sustainable, what are the bottlenecks and what needs to change in the technology for it to be highly successful. Ethical and social issues will also be discussed. The language of teaching and examination is English.
Learning outcome:

The course NRS8003 will provide students with in depth knowledge on the following key topics: 1) History of technological innovation in global health.
2) The process of technology development, optimization and implementation in global health.
3) The essential design features needed for a technological innovation to succeed.
4) A richer understanding of what kind of technologies are scalable and which are not.
5) An understanding of stakeholders in technology development and implementation.
Skills:

Through the course NRS8003, we anticipate that the students will develop the following skills: 
1) Analyzing various models of technology development process and implementation. 
2) Understand the role of design in technology development. 
3) Analysis of the role and responsibilities of various stakeholders in technology development and implementation.
4) Group hands-on projects on assessing a technologys promise and trajectory to improve health outcomes.
5) Group presentations on the technology development and implementation cycle for global health applications.
General competence: 

Upon finishing the course NRS8003, the students will have an in-depth understanding of global health technologies, their trajectory and the bottlenecks in their implementation, as well as experience working in teams to assess the in country viability and sustainability of a given technology, given the in country financial, socio-cultural, technological and logistical realities.