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The landscape of care delivery is increasingly complex, demanding a new breed of leaders who can navigate clinical, business, and social dimensions simultaneously. The University of Illinois and the Gies College of Business introduced the Healthcare Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship (HIDE) specialization inside the online iMBA to answer that need. Built in collaboration with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, and the Siebel Center for Design, the program is designed to blend practical business frameworks with human-centered design and domain-specific healthcare knowledge.
Rather than teach technology in isolation, the HIDE offering emphasizes creating value that people actually adopt. Instructors stress that success in healthcare innovation requires understanding stakeholders, systems, and incentives—not just inventing a product. The specialization is offered both as a track within the iMBA and as a standalone Graduate Certificate, giving professionals flexible options to gain design thinking, strategy, and applied clinical insight while continuing to work.
A cross-disciplinary route to real-world change
The HIDE specialization intentionally crosses traditional academic boundaries so learners can combine business fluency, clinical perspective, and design methods. By bringing together the resources of a business school, a college of medicine, a major health system, and a design center, the program creates an ecosystem where ideas can be tested against real-world constraints. Students learn to view health challenges as part of broader health systems that include social determinants such as housing and transportation, preparing them to craft solutions that fit people’s lives and local contexts.
Curriculum organized around the innovation lifecycle
The sequence of courses models the stages of successful innovation from problem discovery to market introduction. Framed as an innovation lifecycle, the curriculum develops skills that map directly onto the tasks innovators face: diagnosing needs, prototyping and validating concepts, and building sustainable ventures. The program emphasizes applied work, so students practice project management, data analysis, stakeholder engagement, and business modeling through team projects and case-based assignments.
Identify and innovate
The opening course, MBA 571, focuses on understanding the healthcare ecosystem and identifying high-value opportunities by applying methods for problem definition and stakeholder mapping. Students are trained to prioritize needs using both qualitative engagement and quantitative evidence. MBA 572 then moves from needs to creation: it covers models of healthcare innovation, process improvement, and the role of analytics in development. Important technical topics such as design of experiments are included to help learners plan rigorous validations that are relevant to clinical contexts and testing pathways like clinical trials.
Implement and scale
The capstone, MBA 573, prepares participants to translate validated concepts into organizations or ventures. Coursework covers business strategy, venture design, capital and financing approaches, and regulatory considerations specific to health fields. Students explore how emerging technologies and shifting human behavior influence adoption and sustainability. The goal is to equip learners with the judgment to prioritize under constraints and the tools to create measurable pathways from prototype to scaled impact.
Who benefits and why this matters
The HIDE specialization is relevant to a wide range of professionals: clinicians and health system leaders aiming to innovate within operations, industry professionals from pharmaceuticals and medtech, regulators, and those seeking to transition into the health sector from engineering, design, or business. Faculty leaders, including Walter H. Stellner Professor of Marketing Ravi Mehta and associate professor Ujjal Mukherjee, emphasize that the program cultivates both technical competencies and the judgment needed to lead innovation responsibly. By shifting focus from product-first to people-first design, the specialization aims to increase the likelihood that new solutions deliver real value and are widely adopted.