Translational Health Sciences MSc

University of Oxford

MSc

This course takes an interdisciplinary and applied approach to the challenges of implementing innovations and research discoveries in a health care setting.

Utilising innovations to meet healthcare needs is a global imperative – and one that can only become more urgent as demands on our health care systems increase. This applied MSc course brings robust, interdisciplinary and practice-based approaches to addressing the challenges of research translation.

The key focus will be theory and method in the ‘downstream’ phases of translational health sciences – that is, the human, organisational and societal issues that influence the adoption, dissemination and mainstreaming of research discoveries. You can expect to gain a coherent overview of how different academic disciplines can inform problem-solving and guide action in translational health sciences, along with a rigorous interdisciplinary training to further develop your intellectual and research skills.

The course is ideal for researchers who want to study scientific and technological innovation in a healthcare setting and research managers looking to run clinical trials or promote the uptake of research findings. It will also assist entrepreneurs (from industry or the public sector) who seek to improve patient care through innovation and policymakers (local and national) wishing to support research and its translation to improve services. For students interested in undertaking doctoral research, the MSc will prepare them to apply for a DPhil in translational health sciences. The department expects all students to have some relevant past experience in a work environment.

The MSc Translational Health Science can be studied full-time or part-time. Students complete one compulsory module (Introduction and Research Methods for Translational Science), plus five option modules and a dissertation.

DPhil

This doctoral degree is in the social science of healthcare innovation and knowledge translation. Building on a relevant masters-level qualification, you will pursue an independent piece of applied research in a health-related field, supervised by an interdisciplinary team.

For the purposes of this programme, the department defines translational health sciences as the study of the human, organisational and societal issues that impact on the adoption, dissemination and mainstreaming of research discoveries and the harnessing of such discoveries to provide effective, efficient and equitable healthcare.

This DPhil, which builds on a linked MSc in Translational Health Sciences, has been developed as a partial response to national and international calls for urgent expansion of postgraduate training in the development, implementation and sustainability of innovations in healthcare. On completion of the DPhil, you will have extended the boundaries of knowledge and undertaken an original empirical study in an aspect of translational health sciences as defined above, and to be ready to embark on independent applied research in this field.