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 Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• 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
  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
  This course provides an in-depth understanding of health sector marketing in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors for both products and services (hospital, ACOs, payers, life sciences, pharma and biotech, medical devices, medical software, and so on). The course explores how the tools of marketing (e.g., consumer behavior, pricing, promotion, channels, branding, communication, segmentation, etc.) can be employed in the rapidly changing health sector with particular attention to changing organizational structures, financing, technologies, market demands, laws, channels of distribution, on-line and mobile applications, and regulations which require new approaches to marketing. Topics to be addressed include marketing to physicians, DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) Marketing, new product development particularly for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, adoption of medical and service innovations, typical decision making units in the health sector, traditional as well as social media, and social marketing. The course will have you keep in mind always while making marketing decisions that medicine, in the purest sense, is a profession with an intellectual discipline, a tradition of service, and an ethical code of conduct, and that service to the patient, as individuals and in the aggregate, is foremost in marketing decision making.
• 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-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-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
  PhD-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST HM 999: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  PhD-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST IM 345: Global Business Environment
  Required for International Management concentrators. Deals with international economic theories and explores the intersection between theory and practice. Determinants of international trade and payments: international trade theory and policy and balance-of-payments accounting. Explores the implications of trade-promoting and trade-inhibiting institutions and practices: WTO, NAFTA, European Union, etc. Introduces cultural, political, and demographic issues for international managers. 4 cr.
• QST IM 445: Multinational Management
  This is heavily case-based course studying the business strategies of multi- national enterprises, particularly in high-growth and developing economies. Having worldwide operations not only gives companies access to new markets and diverse resources, it also opens up new sources of information and knowledge that stimulate innovation and operational strategies. Along with opportunities, we also look at the challenges to a more complex, diverse, and uncertain business than those faced by companies who focus primarily in their mature markets or even their own country. This course helps students to acquire skills and perspectives that will help them as they pursue careers with multi-national companies or other opportunities in the global business environment.
• QST IM 471: Made in Italy
  TBD
• QST IM 498: Directed Study: International Management
  Directed study in International Management. 2 or 4 cr. Application available on Undergraduate Program website.
• QST IM 845: Asian Field Seminar
  How do we prepare for the emerging opportunities and challenges that China's economic development and Asia's growing presence continue to create? This two-week seminar through six cities in China and Korea provides future global business leaders with an opportunity to contemplate answers to the above question. We visit companies (both multinational and local) competing in this dynamic market, meet governmental officials to hear about policies and implications, learn from local MBA professors about what they see our strengths and weaknesses are, participate in real market activities, and develop global network of knowledge with local MBA students and BU alumni in the region. Through this process, students will deepen their understanding of the unique nature of opportunities and challenges in the region, become more comfortable with the myriads of cultural and communicational details, and explore professional opportunities located in the region.
• QST IM 851: European Field Seminar
  The European Field Seminar gives students an appreciation of "competing in Europe." The European competitive landscape is changing rapidly. Three Boston- based class sessions introduce students to topics such as the history of the European Union, European Community Law, Member States, European Monetary Union, and Competition Policy. During a two week period, the class visits a variety of organizations in Europe to learn about relevant competition issues; students experience first-hand how firms are dealing with them (or should be dealing with them). The wide variety of Sectors covered appeals to a broad segment of the MBA population.
• QST IM 860: Social Impact Seminar
  This course provides an action-based learning experience for students interested in understanding how for-profit and non-profit organizations develop innovative products and services that help mitigate grand challenges such as climate change, food security, global health, and poverty, and enable them to grow their business and sustain their competitive advantage over time. Students will work on a live 'social impact' consulting project for a client from the host country, and present their recommendation to the client while in the country. Furthermore, students will visit and interact with various players in the social impact sector (e.g., entrepreneurs, high-level executives, non-profit leaders) to learn about the opportunities and challenges they face. This course is ideal for students interested in social impact, sustainable energy, environmental sustainability, social entrepreneurship, socially responsible investing (SRI), and global health and healthcare.
• QST IM 885: International Management Field Seminar
  This course will allow students the opportunity to utilize and apply their MBA learning to business work experience. Students will secure their internship in a position related to the MBA degree program. The deliverable of the project is a paper in which the students must address how the position will leverage their MBA career growth and industry analysis. The deliverable will be due upon completion of the internship experience.
• QST IS 223: Introduction to Information Systems
  Provides students with an understanding of the important role that information and information technology play in supporting the effective operation and management of business. Elaborates on the themes of "place to space" and the implications for business of the digital enterprise. Focuses on learning IS concepts in the context of application to real business problems.
• QST IS 428: Managing Information Security
  Combines technical and business approaches to the management of information. It will address technical issues such as cryptography, intrusion detection, and firewalls along with managerial ideas such as overall security policies, managing uncertainty and risk, and organization factors. We will examine different aspects of computer security such as password, virus protection, and managing computer security in dynamic environments. Topics will also include network security and how to secure wireless application and services. These technical details will be placed in a business context. The class will have a practical focus as we examine current "best practices" in area. There will be several guest speakers in the security area. This will be a project-oriented class and students will present their research projects during the last several classes. 4 cr.
• QST IS 454: Building Web Applications for Business
  Designed to teach business students the strategic value gained from a competitive advantage perspective around the organizational planning, implementation strategies and on-going modification strategies regarding the process of building functioning web applications on multiple platforms. The course will utilize a number of approaches throughout the semester which will enable students who are not hard-core programmers to learn what code does, how to write and utilize existing code modules and why and how it works, doesn't work, creates challenges and opportunities in an organizational structure . The goal at the end of the semester is for students to have a very thorough theoretical understanding, appreciation and application of the development process in surrounding Web strategies and applications for business.

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