Syllabus

As our world becomes more and more digitized, patients and their devices are generating streams of valuable data that can provide meaningful clinical insights. This digital health revolution provides great opportunities to design and validate new digital health concepts. Many groups within Stanford Medicine have promising ideas that are ripe for development, however, they lack the software engineering and healthcare compliance know-how to take them forward.

Building for Digital Health is a Biodesign course sponsored by the Stanford School of Medicine (SoM) and Stanford’s Computer Science (CS) department. Its goal is to provide students with the opportunity to apply their skills to real-world digital health projects, while enabling academic and industry mentors to collaborate with these talented individuals to help bring ideas to reality. Both audiences will learn a repeatable approach for developing new digital health technologies and preparing to launch them in the market.

Over the course of ten weeks, students and mentors will work together to tackle a project and launch an app-enabled MVP solution. Every week, students will learn about digital health software development, HealthIT policy, hardware integration, interacting with wearables, health data privacy and security, and more. In the final week of class, teams will present their final project to a panel of digital health experts.

Goals of the Course

• Gain exposure to unmet needs in the healthcare field and learn to design and build secure digital solutions to address them.
• Get experience working with technical and multidisciplinary teams with the help of external mentors and industry experts who can help guide career paths in health tech innovation.
• Use AI tools to accelarate your development process

The technologies and approach used this year are described in Topics Covered.

Eligibility and the enrollment process for Winter 2027 will be published with the student application.

Prerequisites

Teams will be coding throughout the quarter. We require that you have taken CS106A/B or equivalent. We highly recommend some experience with mobile platforms (CS193P/A, CS47), OR web platforms (CS142).

Units

3–4 units.

Grading options

Students may elect to attend the course for CR/NC or for a Letter Grade.

The class meets Wednesdays, 3:30–6:20 pm Pacific, for 10 sessions from January 6, 2027 to March 10, 2027. Each session and its materials are listed on the Sessions page.

Amount of work expected

Teams can expect up to 8-10 hours of work each week beyond classroom hours. A majority of the effort is spent researching needs, meeting need coaches and mentors, interviewing stakeholders, and coding solutions as a team.

In addition to attending classes, completing readings, and participating actively in the classroom environment, students are required to complete a class project exploring a need in digital mobile health.

Projects are chosen in advance from a list of need areas, sourced by faculty & industry partners. Projects are pitched in the first session, and students work on them in teams for the rest of the quarter.

Each team works with a project mentor and the teaching team throughout the quarter. Project teams must share presentation responsibilities.

Not yet publishedTeam-formation steps and the mentor-meeting schedule for Winter 2027 will be posted here.

Teams will complete a midterm and final presentation, discussing progress and functionality. The final deliverable will be a research-ready mobile application.

• Midterm presentations — Week 5, Wednesday, February 3, 2027. All team members must be present.
• Final presentations — Week 10, Wednesday, March 10, 2027. All team members must be present.

Assignment deadlines are posted with each session once they are confirmed. A deadline that is not listed has not been set.

Not yet publishedAssignment details and project handoff requirements for Winter 2027 will be posted here.

Not yet publishedAssessment weights and rubrics for Winter 2027 are being finalized. One approved grading model will be published here and used consistently in Canvas and course materials.

In person attendance is required.

No more than one unexcused absence is permitted. A second absence may be permitted with written justification by the student and fulfillment of a make-up assignment. Two or more unexcused absences will lead to a No CR grade.

AI coding tools are part of how this course is taught; see Topics Covered. Stanford’s Honor Code applies to all work in the course.

Not yet publishedThe course policy on responsible use of AI tools, attribution, and collaboration for Winter 2027 will be posted here.

Health research requires adherence to strict security and privacy protocols, and Stanford requires researchers working in this area to obtain specific certifications. Specifically, a Stanford HIPAA certificate is required, and is obtained through the STARS training system (Stanford login required). This certification will enable students to work on other IRB-approved research, and is a requirement for most research within the School of Medicine.

Not yet publishedGuidance for project-specific data access will be provided to each team with its project.

Code and IP created is governed by Stanford’s standard IP procedures, and will be used to inform University research.

Not yet publishedProject and publication expectations for Winter 2027 will be posted here in approved institutional wording.

Students who may need academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066, URL: oae.stanford.edu).

Meghana Nerurkar, Course manager — mnerur@stanford.edu

Not yet publishedThe Winter 2027 Canvas site, communication channels, office hours, and response-time expectations will be posted here before the quarter begins.