Keeping Up with Health Care Innovation

Minnesota is one of the largest sectors in Minnesota and one of the premier clusters of health care businesses in the world. “It’s a sector that’s growing four times faster than any other sector within our economy,” said John McVea, faculty director for the MS in Health Care Innovation program.

In fact, health care is innovating so quickly that it’ll be virtually unrecognizable in the next ten years. At its current trajectory, something has to change, and the best prospect for that is innovation, according to McVea. That means learning to do more with less, learning to innovate in the way we’ve seen some of the fundamental changes in retail.

The MS in Health Care Innovation at St. Thomas aims to deliver. The program focuses on teaching three fundamental concepts: understanding the customer experience, understanding how innovation works, and being fiscally responsible.

“Health care is a big player in the Minnesota workforce, so being able to provide skills to people to bring to those organizations is really exciting,” said Kate DiAna, director of the HCI program.

St. Thomas welcomed its first cohort of Health Care Innovation students in fall 2018. Students range from those in mid-level management positions in health care to those skilled in business marketing or operations.

“There are a lot of people in health care who realize health care is going to be turned upside down. They don’t want to be victims of that; they want to be people leading that change,” said McVea.

Katrina Anderson ’17, agrees. “St. Thomas has done a great job on providing a safe environment for students to fail and learn. Innovation can be lonely, but there’s a community of us out there who are trying to innovate and improve health care.”