Fellowship in Healthcare Entrepreneurship at CfHE, IIT Hyderabad
The Fellowship Program in Healthcare Entrepreneurship at the Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) is a world-class, 1-year immersive program designed to launch the next generation of healthcare pioneers. Hosted at IIT Hyderabad, this in-residence, hands-on program bridges the gap between clinical needs and commercialized MedTech solutions, offering successful fellows a direct pathway to startup incubation.
We bring together an elite, multidisciplinary cohort of the brightest minds:
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Engineers & Technology Entrepreneurs
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Clinicians & Healthcare Professionals
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Product Designers
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Business & Strategy Visionaries
By merging deep domain expertise with non-technical aspects like user experience (UX) and scalable business models, our fellows address critical clinical challenges. The result? Disruptive, high-impact innovations in biomedical devices, digital healthcare, and medical services that create a lasting social impact.
The Fellowship Program in Healthcare Entrepreneurship at the Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) is a world-class, 1-year immersive program designed to launch the next generation of healthcare pioneers. Hosted at IIT Hyderabad, this in-residence, hands-on program bridges the gap between clinical needs and commercialized MedTech solutions, offering successful fellows a direct pathway to startup incubation.
We bring together an elite, multidisciplinary cohort of the brightest minds:
-
Engineers & Technology Entrepreneurs
-
Clinicians & Healthcare Professionals
-
Product Designers
-
Business & Strategy Visionaries
By merging deep domain expertise with non-technical aspects like user experience (UX) and scalable business models, our fellows address critical clinical challenges. The result? Disruptive, high-impact innovations in biomedical devices, digital healthcare, and medical services that create a lasting social impact.
A Structured Curriculum for Bio-Design Innovation
The CfHE curriculum follows a highly structured, strongly hands-on 5-Step Pathway built for end-to-end product and service development:
1. Fundamentals & Human Biology
Fellows master the core tenets of the bio-design process alongside essential training in human anatomy, physiology, and disease state fundamentals.
2. Intense Clinical Immersion & Need Finding
To identify real-world, unmet medical needs, fellows undergo deep clinical immersions in leading private and public hospitals. Moving beyond raw data, you will be trained in rigorous “Needs Filtering” and “Needs Statement” development to isolate high-potential market gaps.
3. Ideation & Brainstorming
Collaborate across disciplines in high-energy brainstorming sessions to ideate innovative, human-centered solutions tailored to validated clinical needs.
4. Design, Prototyping & Validation
Translate your concepts into physical realities. Fellows leverage cutting-edge IIT Hyderabad research laboratories and fabrication hubs to design, prototype, and validate their biomedical innovations.
5. IP, Regulation & Business Strategy
While building your product, you will receive expert mentorship on healthcare Regulatory Aspects (FDA, CE, CDSCO approvals), Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), patent filing, and robust business plan development for market entry.
Access an Unmatched MedTech Ecosystem
As a CfHE Fellow, you don’t innovate in isolation. You gain full access to a premium ecosystem built for healthcare startups:
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World-Class Facilities: Utilize state-of-the-art infrastructure and faculty expertise at IIT Hyderabad.
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Elite Mentorship: Learn directly from a network of seasoned industry professionals, global medtech experts, and dedicated advisors.
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Investor Network: Connect with venture capitalists (VCs) and angel investors looking for the next big healthcare breakthrough.
The Grand Finale: Pitching & Incubation
The culmination of your year-long fellowship is the Grand Finale Pitch Day.
Teams present their medical devices and healthcare products to an eminent jury consisting of top-tier clinicians, hospital managers, and venture capitalists.
🏆 The Ultimate Launchpad: Successful and high-potential teams are instantly welcomed into the CfHE Incubation Program to scale their healthcare startups globally.
Right from its inception in 2016, the Fellowship program has been continuously attracting talent from premier engineering institutions in the country like IITs, NITs, BITS etc, medical colleges like AIIMS, JIPMER etc, Business Schools like IIMs, ISB etc and design schools like NID.
Over 70% of our fellows successfully graduate and get incubated with a CfHE seed grant of 25 Lakhs. Since 2017 CfHE as a Healthcare Entrepreneurship Educator cum TBI, has successfully transformed 12 fellows into 7 companies with innovative healthcare solutions in diverse areas such as Neuro Rehabilitation, Neonatal, Maternal Health, Adult care, as well as healthcare service innovation in vaccination.
All our start-ups have been able to raise grants amounting to at least five times the seed grant including BIRAC’s BIG (Biotechnology Ignition Grant) followed by SBIRI (Small Business Innovation Research Initiative), Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant, Indo-US Science and Technology Endowment Fund, Millennium Alliance Grant etc.
Inefficient problem identification contributes to the current poor state of treatment in healthcare ecosystem. There is a clear need for strategic problem identification in the field of healthcare.
Crux of the success of the CfHE fellowship program lies in its clinical immersion path. This part of the fellowship program help the fellows to understand why real world designs must meet multiple realistic constraints. Here fellows do visitations at various leading hospitals in Hyderabad: Kamineni Group of Hospitals, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG), Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), to name a few. It gives the fellows an opportunity to observe the clinical environment and understand and evaluate the workflow processes as well as the contexts in which diagnosis and therapy evolve and how medical equipment are put to use.
During each clinical visit, fellows shadow clinicians in their day-to-day activities such as out-patient clinics, wards rounds and surgeries. They make detailed observations and identify from these observations various pain points where probable suboptimal diagnosis / treatment was delivered to the patient. Each Fellow documents between 30-50 observations and findings per visit
Following each clinic visit, fellows discuss these and from observations they identify problems and formulate problem statements. Problem statements are then mapped onto unmet medical needs.
They then engage in the process of needs screening where the needs are prioritized based on a custom-made ranking scale which takes into account criticality, prevalence and incidence, technical complexity and potential market opportunities
After learning the biodesign process and prior to clinical immersion, fellows complete background research on the diseases being discussed, including (1) disease prevalence, pathophysiology, disease mechanisms, etc., (2) current treatment options and standard of care, (3) stakeholders involved in a solution, and (4) what the existing market looks like.
The fellows are also imparted specialised technical support and mentoring in areas including Market Requirements, Financial Projection, Cash Flow Analysis, Risk Classification, Risk Management & QMS in setting up and running their own business. Regulatory, IPR and Business Law to mention a few.