MSc in Applied Digital Health

Course aims

The interdisciplinary expertise and skills taught in this MSc programme all underlie one unifying concept: the use of digital tools to improve health outcomes in the real world. You will learn how to critically evaluate, harness and advance the tools, practices and process of digital health care.  Whatever your previous academic background – be it clinical medicine, software engineering or any number of other fields – our aim is that upon graduation you be well placed to do pioneering work in the digital health sector.

multidisciplinary and expert led

Who is this course designed for?

Aimed at early or mid-career professionals, entrants to this course will come from a wide range of backgrounds, including clinical medicine, public health, medical sociology, psychology, statistics, computer science and engineering. While no pre-existing knowledge is assumed, you must have an interest in both the social and technical aspects of digital health.

Course outline

This course consists of eight compulsory modules, each spanning a two-week block, and a dissertation. The academic year is split into three terms of eight weeks, however, assignments are not restricted to term time only.

The content will take a broad perspective on digital health, equipping students to be future researchers, policymakers, technology specialists or health practitioners. Wherever their particular interests may lie, we believe course graduates will be well placed to do pioneering work in the digital health sector.

Modules:

1. Foundations of Digital Health
2. Harnessing Big Data for Clinical Decision Support
   
3. AI for efficient healthcare systems
   
4. Remote Monitoring and Digital Diagnostics
5. Supporting Health Behaviour Change Using Digital Tools
6. Digital Transformation of Primary Care
7. Economics of Digital Health
8. User Focused Design and the Lifecycle of Digital Health Innovation

The modules spotlight different ways in which digital health can be used to address the challenges facing twenty-first century healthcare. These solutions include harnessing multimodal health data to support diagnosis and prognosis; improving outcomes via remote patient monitoring and digital diagnostics; using digital tools to facilitate physical and cognitive behaviour change; facilitating more efficient and effective models of care delivery; reducing the cost of care.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: assess and debate current issues for health systems seeking to harness digital health

• assess and debate current issues for health systems seeking to harness digital health 
• summarise the state-of-the-art in digital health tools – including digital therapeutics, digital diagnostics, learning health systems and those that facilitate automated care pathways or improved patient (self)management – and describe how they work
• identify and formulate a response to the ethical, policy, regulatory and practice challenges facing digital health
• identify and discuss the drivers, enablers, barriers and challenges to digital health innovation, both generally and for real-world examples
• explain the requirements for user-focused development, meaningful evaluation and successful implementation of digital health tools, and propose the actions and processes needed to meet these requirements
• understand the main qualitative and quantitative research methods used in the study of digital health, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each
• use existing literature to explore a specific digital health topic and be able to contextualise that learning in terms of the wider digital health eco-system

Course delivery

The teaching is delivered via a range of methods, including lectures, seminars, workshops, presentations, self- directed learning and study, with all theoretical learning underpinned by real world case-studies.