From March 19 to June 25, 2020, Leyden Academy, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden will provide the Honors Class Innovating Health and Well-being through Entrepreneurship. This Honors Class is part of Master Honors Classes, special extracurricular courses for talented master students who work in multidisciplinary teams on innovative solutions for health and well-being challenges.
Given this special time we are in, these challenges are related to the corona crisis. In the next ten weeks, fifty bachelor and master students of Leiden University will engage in a virtual learning experience to tackle complex issues such as:
- How can we keep in touch with elderly people living independently who do not have digital resources?
- How do we explain the measures to children, young people, people who are illiterate or who have intellectual disabilities?
- How can we keep care providers safe and healthy, while they care for vulnerable people?
- How can we deal with loneliness among students, youth, and seniors today?
- How should we deal with social distancing in the last phase of a person’s life?
The curriculum starts with defining and analyzing the problem, followed by design thinking processes (creativity and innovation), better understanding of the end user and testing with MVPs (minimum viable product or service), and testing on viability, through business modeling and value proposition. We hope that the innovations will ultimately make a positive contribution to the issues we face in this unreal time.