Since I moved to the Northern Hemisphere, in Fall of 2020, I am co-teaching “The Design Teams” 8-course program at The Johns Hopkins University, BME Department. Based on my research and previous work, I am bringing in the anthro-design component to develop more respectful solutions in healthcare. The Design Teams Course suite looks to understand the social elements embedded in the development and adoption of new technologies during the resolution of real-world issues in healthcare. For these courses, the students execute a four-phase design process. The process is central to the student’s learning experience. We have defined four major phases of divergent and convergent thinking (Newell, Shaw & Simon, 1967) scaffolded by concrete tools for understanding, ideating, making, and retrieving feedback from the proposed solutions. Even though the courses instruct some entrepreneurial and business content, go-to-market strategies will be out of focus. Nonetheless, co-curricular options exist to continue and fund the developments achieved in this applied engineering design experience. We will support students in these endeavors.

The image above showcases the Design Team’s curriculum as a set of courses displayed in about 18 months. TL stands for courses focused on team leaders. Anyone can apply for this position and go through the selection process. The figure below shows how the students go through the process and onboard team members as they go. DT stands for those courses that undergraduates will undergo with their teams. Students must commit to participating for a whole academic year. If you are a clinician, industry partner, or startup interested in working with my teams, please shoot me an email! You can see me on the Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Website. 

Figure 2. Onboarding of the team members.