Nov 10, 2024  
USC Catalogue 2024-2025 
    
USC Catalogue 2024-2025

Health Innovation Minor


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The Health Innovation Minor is intended for undergraduate students at USC who are interested in collaborative health innovations that leverage the complex intersections of health science expertise, societal need, technology, patient active participation, new business/finance models and inclusive policy for health. Through participation in the minor, students will have the opportunity to:

  • Identify cross-cutting health challenges and understand their components and interrelations;
  • Create a diverse team with common interests and different view-points surrounding a health innovation challenge of common interest to the team;
  • Cross-train in the core aspects of a challenge so as to facilitate collaboration and communication;
  • Collaborate with other team members to prototype a process or product innovation that addresses a chosen challenge;
  • Investigate the intersectional components of an impactful innovation and co-design elements from different sectors that are tightly coupled within a challenge;
  • Use the co-design process to introduce disruptive perspectives across and within participating sectors

In the process the students build collaborative innovation skills that are relevant to 21st century environments with an emphasis on health applications for diverse populations. The skills include systems thinking, cross-sector collaboration, integrated innovation,  iterative improvement, team-building, project management, design strategy, inclusive design. 

The minor is a collaborative effort between: the Iovine and Young Academy (IYA); the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Social Work, Gerontology and Cinematic Arts; the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy; the School of Dance; the School of Public Policy; the Department of Biomedical Engineering; the Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine; and the Institute for Creative Technologies.

Application information for the minor can be found at: iovine-young.usc.edu​.

Introductory Course (4 units)


This course will introduce students to the processes of collaborative health innovation and the key intersections that drive these innovations. The course will also help students to select health innovation challenges of interest, find collaborators (students, faculty and industry) and develop diverse teams around their chosen challenge(s).  This course is required for completing the minor.

Cross-Training Courses (8 units)


Cross-training courses provide students with working knowledge of domains involved in health innovation that are beyond each student’s existing knowledge and skills. The goal is to allow students to collaborate with experts from distant domains and understand the intersections between their domain(s) of knowledge and skills and other domains involved in health innovation.  

Students need to complete 8 units from the following:


Intersectional Courses (8 units)


Intersectional Courses explore the intersections and interactions of two or more domains involved in health innovation. These courses will focus on current or potential intersectoral strengths at USC (i.e., human movement and technology). The current list is given below and will continue to evolve. 

It is recommended that students take two courses that explore intersections relevant to health innovation that are also of interest to the student. Courses will admit students with rising junior or above level of preparation in one of the domains involved in the course or sophomores with advanced preparation in the course themes. 

Students must complete a minimum of 8 units from the following:​​​​​​​

Capstone (4 units)


This course will allow students teams that span different domains and have some cross-training and intersection competencies in health innovation and are participating in the minor, to work together on ideating, prototyping, and evaluating a health innovation that is driven by an industry and/or community-based project or prompt from the common USC Health Innovation Project Repository. 

Undergraduate student teams will be matched to the repository projects for this capstone course based on student interest and faculty and industry interest in mentoring the proposed student work.

Students must complete the following course:

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