Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• QST FE 898: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and the department chair
  Graduate-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 899: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and the department chair
  Graduate-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 918: Doctoral Seminar in Finance
  This doctoral course, is designed to provide students with an introduction to financial economics. This lecture-based course will cover no arbitrage conditions, preferences and risk aversion, portfolio selection, the capital asset pricing model, asset pricing and dynamic asset pricing. In addition to lectures, this class will include readings and assignments. Open to MBA students with faculty member's permission. Must have strong quantitative background and several courses in finance or economics.
• QST FE 920: Advanced Capital Markets
  This course provides a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of modern asset pricing theories. Extensive use is made of continuous time stochastic processes, stochastic calculus and optimal control. In particular, martingale methods are employed to address the following topics: (i) optimal consumption- portfolio policies and (ii) asset pricing in general equilibrium models. Advances involving non-separable preferences, incomplete information and agent diversity will be discussed.
• QST FE 990: Current Topics Seminar
  For PhD students in the Finance department. Registered by permission only.
• QST FE 998: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and the department chair
  PhD-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 999: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and the department chair
  PhD-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST HF 999: Humphrey Seminr
  
• QST HM 703: Health Sector Issues and Opportunities
  This course provides a dynamic introduction to the health sector, beginning with the burden and distribution of disease and current patterns of expenditures. While the emphasis will be on the American system, a global context will be developed. The basic elements of insurance and payment, service delivery, and life sciences products will be described, and put in the context of the unique economic structure of the sector. The intense challenges of the sector will be explored, as well as both the ethical issues presented and the opportunities that emerge. Public policy and technological and practice development as drivers of change will be addressed throughout.
• QST HM 710: Health Service Delivery: Strategies, Solutions and Execution
  Graduate Prerequisites: QST HM 703.
  The overarching theme of this course is health care organizational transformation. The course will provide knowledge and skills needed to develop and implement high performing health care systems capable of delivering accessible, high quality, efficient services. It will draw upon relevant information from disciplinary areas of study including strategy, operations, marketing, finance, law, human resources, quality improvement, and information technology.
• QST HM 717: Drugs, Devices, and Diagnostics: New Challenges, Strategies, and Execution
  Graduate Prerequisites: QST HM703, QST FE712 or FE722, QST MK723 or MK724, QST SI750 or SI751
  This course will examine issues and opportunities in life sciences focused on the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices sectors and the life sciences service industry supporting these sectors, through the eyes of the CEO. The course will investigate who manages these companies and what are the strategies that are used to build successful enterprises. Students will be introduced to individuals and institutions at every stage of the development cycle from idea generation and start-up fundraising to manufacturing, commercialization and global expansion. We will specifically look at key elements of strategy and the execution by examining companies, that have either succeeded or failed, by discussing the pros and cons of different approaches and teasing out the lessons one can derive from leaders in the field and case studies examining their approaches.
• QST HM 801: Bench-to-Bedside: Translating Biomedical Innovation from the Laboratory to the Marketplace
  The subject of the course is the translation of medical technologies into new products and services for the healthcare system. The course begins with a rigorous study of university research commercialization including intellectual property, licensing and planning, creating, funding and building new entrepreneurial ventures. Concepts and tools are presented for assessing new technologies and their potential to be the basis for commercialization. Cross- disciplinary teams of students will be formed which will evaluate translational research projects currently being developed at Boston University and other local academic research institutions, to develop a go-to-market strategy. There will be a case studies and guest lecturers to discuss examples of both success and failure in technology commercialization.
• QST HM 817: Advances in Digital Health
  Digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the health sector. Health information technology now permeate every segment of the health value chain, starting with the search for health information, to improving patient outcomes, to improving health. In this course students explore the evolving digital health landscape through a mix of case studies, practitioner talks, individual papers and team projects. Students will enhance their digital health requirements and systems selection toolbox. They will develop competence in current digital health technology standards, gain a deeper understanding of the strategic drivers of digital health through the eyes of the healthcare CIO and CMIO, the operational challenges from the perspective of the end user and the healthcare providers, and challenges of incorporating digital health technologies into existing workflows.
• QST HM 820: Strategy, Economics, and Policy in the Health Sector
  Graduate Prerequisites: QST PL 727 or QST PL 730.
  This course studies the strategic and economic issues facing insurers, providers, and life-sciences companies in the healthcare sector. The course will adapt tools from health economics, strategy, and finance to understand the problems faced by these firms. The course will also examine the problems faced by regulators, who must craft policies that shape the healthcare sector: which hospital mergers to allow; what procedures health insurers must cover; how public programs ought to reimburse life-sciences companies; how quality of care is measured and rewarded; and so on.
• QST HM 833: Health Sector Marketing
  Graduate Prerequisites: QST HM703, and QST MK723 or MK724
  This course provides an understanding of health sector marketing for health care services delivery (e.g., health systems, independent hospitals, hospices, pharmacies), for private business (e.g., life sciences, pharma, and biotech), and for insurance (e.g., commercial insurance and government). The course explores marketing insights and marketing strategies in the context of the evolving health sector. Topics addressed include the marketing of health care services by providers, insurance product marketing, marketing to physicians, new product development, particularly for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and consumer adoption of medical and service innovations. The course will build students' knowledge of the unique challenges of health sector marketing and will build facility with applying the principles of marketing to situations across this vast landscape.
• QST HM 840: Health Sector Consulting
  This is an applied consulting project course that aims to develop reflexive practitioners who can elicit client requirements, translate requirements into a problem statement and develop actionable solutions that meet client needs. The course uses a mix of case studies, individual memos and team project deliverables to systematically apply skills developed over the course of the MBA to solve real-world health sector problems. Students work on the consulting assignment in teams of up to four students based on having a shared interest in a prospective consulting project. These projects are curated in partnership with sponsor organizations to be executable within the framework of an academic semester. Projects in the past have ranged from improving the departmental revenue cycle within an academic medical center, developing an international pricing strategy for the introduction of a new product by a pharmaceutical company, to improving safety culture at a large hospital. These projects all have active involvement of the project sponsors who provide access to their organizations and provide ongoing feedback over the lifecycle of the consulting engagement.
• QST HM 848: Driving Health Sector Innovation
  This course examines an array of compelling opportunities for innovation, incremental and disruptive, across products and services, created within existing organizations or by starting new businesses. It bridges design and implementation, examining the unique and complex array of elements that make successful innovation in the health sector so difficult, and developing the skills and knowledge needed to effectively address those challenges. The course provides a conceptual framework, and then emphasizes hands-on engagement, concrete exercises, written cases, and in-class speakers who are engaged in real-world innovation initiatives. Students will have the opportunity to focus on areas of particular interest and relevance to current or future work. They will leave better equipped to drive or support the viable, value-creating innovation so desperately needed in the health sector.
• QST HM 898: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and the department chair
  Graduate-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST HM 899: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and the department chair
  Graduate-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST HM 998: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and the department chair
  PhD-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.