Stanford Engineering
Emergence

Biodesign and Technology Entrepreneurship for Societal Health

Addressing the social and environmental drivers of health is a new frontier of innovation.

Advances in this area will allow us to improve global and public health at scale and tackle major health burdens such as chronic disease, mental health challenges, food insecurity and malnutrition, misinformation, and growing inequalities. In Biodesign and Technology Entrepreneurship for Societal Health, you will learn about the practical, scientific, technological, and economic opportunities unique to innovating in these problem areas.

Applications for the Winter 2024 quarter will open during the Fall 2022-2023 quarter! 

During this interactive, project-based course, over 40 expert guest speakers and mentors, including inspiring entrepreneurs, impact investors, researchers, and global health leaders, will share their journeys and how their work addresses societal health challenges. 

You will be taught the Biodesign process and Impact Entrepreneurship framework and using them will help you to deeply understand important unmet needs, interview a range of stakeholders and potential customers, generate insights on the problems you are tackling, conduct brainstorming and ideation sessions, develop concept prototypes, and validate your ideas to develop a product or service that people want, and that society needs.

In addition to lectures and discussions about important topics like global health, the social determinants of health, and the impact of climate change on health, students will learn through experience. The experiential component of this class is about rolling up your sleeves, forming teams, researching and reframing societal health problems, and developing technology solutions to address them. By engaging with our speakers, developing your project, and working on class activities you will learn about innovation areas, partnerships, business models, and funding sources to improve health equity and societal health at scale. 

You also will learn how to lay the foundation for building a impact-driven start-up and organization exploring topics such as DEI, mission-aligned capital and governance, and aligning business models with impact. Students will be a part of teams tackling societal health issues and will be provided with expert mentors to help them through the class and in innovating to create a concept to fill an unmet need. Deliverables are focused on classroom activities and team presentations.

Enrollment will be capped at 30 students and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early! This course is offered as part of the Biodesign-Emergence Partnership.  

BIODESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY FOR SOCIETAL HEALTH 

Apply today!

   Example Student Projects

Student Testimonials

 

Teaching Team

Dr. Pedram Afshar is the founder and CEO of Sage Health, a health-financial technology company aimed at reducing the burden of emergency health needs for the underinsured. Pedram has spent 20 years building medical technology solutions. He developed the device Medtronic Percept, which improves outcomes to those with limited neurologist access. He holds 5 patents and has 8 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Narges Baniasadi is the founder and executive director of Emergence at Stanford. Narges founded Bina, a pioneering Bioinformatics company, which developed high performance computing platforms and AI solutions for cancer research and genomics analysis. Later, upon acquisition of Bina by Roche, she led the clinical software development and AI research as VP of Informatics at Roche Sequencing until 2018.

Michelle de Haaff has 25+ years of experience in Silicon Valley, with expertise in CRM, marketing, and AI. Most recently, she was a start up leader and Vice President at Glooko, a diabetes digital health company, where she increased revenue from $0 to $18M+, and brought multiple products through FDA clearance. Michelle currently is a strategic consultant to digital health companies.

Speakers and Collaborators

As well as Societal Health Startups, such as: