Innovating Solutions for Aging Populations

Aging has been coined as one of the major societal challenges. The fact that we simply live longer, is in itself not a problem but rather a triumph. However, this unprecedented demographic change significantly affects individual life histories through an increased number of e.g. lifestyle related chronic diseases. These extra life years, also have a massive imprint on the organization of welfare institutions and the financial sustainability of the welfare system.

This course will introduce you to healthcare innovation within the field of healthy living and active aging. By following two specific cases on diabetes and rehabilitation, this interdisciplinary course will provide you with key theories, tools and concepts for analyzing and developing viable innovative solutions for aging populations. The lectures will cover demographic, biological, economic, social and cultural aspects of active aging and healthy living, along with lectures on current innovation theories and methods.

During the course you will meet leading researchers and experts from among others: University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School, Steno Diabetes Center in Copenhagen and Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

They work with very different aspects of active aging and healthy living, from biomedicine to digital design, but what ties them together is the belief that an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare innovation will benefit the aging population.

The course is part of the EIT Health Campus programme https://www.eithealth.eu/campus.

We hope you will enjoy this course and equip yourself to take a more professional approach to healthcare innovation.

Introduction
Welcome! In this module you will get a short introduction to this interdisciplinary, hands-on course about how healthcare innovations can help solve the challenges we are facing with aging populations.

Diabetes
In this module you will be presented with the physiology, complications, prevention and treatment of diabetes. Also, you will be introduced to self-management tools designed to help people with diabetes choose healthy meal plans.

Rehabilitation
In this module you will learn about the Danish healthcare system, how the financial resourses are dispersed and how the public and private expenditures are organised – with a special focus on rehabilitation. Finally, you will be introduced to a rehabilitation tool developed by the Danish company, DigiRehab.

The Business Case
This module will begin with an introduction to ethnography as a tool to analyse user needs. You will also hear about how firms can position themselves to benefit from innovation, and you will be introduced to intellectual property rights and competitive analysis. Finally you will learn how health technology should be assessed. In the lessons the DigiRehab case from module 3 will be used as an example.

Digital Health Care Design
In this final module you will be introduced to digital design methods and how to explore the solution and the problem during the innovation process. You will learn how to frame the design problem through field studies and collaboration, and how to apply prototypes in your work.