Healthcare Technology
Imagine creating and implementing technologies that will shape the future of healthcare. In this programme, you will develop solutions such as AI tools, biosensors and healthcare robots while learning how to take innovations from concept to clinical practice. You will build, test and take healthcare technology toward real-world use.
Healthcare solutions that translate into clinical use
Healthcare is changing rapidly. Populations worldwide are becoming older, and their needs are growing more complex, while healthcare faces a shortage of personnel. Hospitals and health services must find new, smarter ways of delivering care. Technology, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to robotics and biosensors, is a promising part of the answer.
However, technology alone is not enough. It takes professionals who understand both technology and healthcare, and who can turn ideas into solutions that work in the real world. This is exactly what this master's programme trains you to do.
Two backgrounds – one team
The programme admits students from two distinct backgrounds and offers two programme options:
- Health Sciences – for applicants with a background in fields such as medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, clinical psychology or neurobiology.
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) – for applicants with a background in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
From day one, you will study, work, and build together in interdisciplinary teams.
Each programme option includes a first-semester course designed to bridge your knowledge gap: STEM students take an introductory course to medicine and the Norwegian healthcare system, including a day shadowing a healthcare professional at a partner hospital, while Health Sciences students learn programming.
In this way you will form a group, where technologists are trained to speak the language of the clinic, and clinicians the language of technologists, and everyone learns to innovate together. This mirrors how real healthcare innovation happens, and it is what makes this programme unique.
Learn by building – from idea to implementation
This is a hands-on, application-oriented study programme. Through project-based courses developed with hospitals, industry and technology incubators, you will
- work in interdisciplinary teams on real clinical challenges proposed by our partner hospitals and companies, from the very first semester
- design, prototype and test healthcare technologies, with a strong emphasis on machine learning, robotics and biosensors
- build a start-up concept around your own healthcare solution: develop a business plan, navigate the regulatory landscape, assess economic viability and pitch to a panel of “potential investors” from industry and incubators
Areas of specialisation
Through your choice of elective courses, team projects and master's thesis, you can deepen your knowledge and skills in the areas that interest you most, such as
- machine learning and AI applied to healthcare: biosignal and medical image analysis
- medical devices, biosensors and robotics: from measurement principles to building and testing your own prototypes
- digital health and remote monitoring: supporting people at home, from prevention to follow-up care
- healthcare technology implementation: the regulation, economics and organisational realities that decide whether a good idea reaches clinical practice
Topics span the breadth of the activities of our partner hospitals and partner industry: from clinical fields such as cardiology, rehabilitation medicine to mental health to technology and product development.
You can also build your thesis on open medical datasets or, in agreement with your supervisor, on data you collect yourself in our labs.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
The programme is hosted by the Department of Technology Systems (UiO) and developed in close collaboration with the Department of Physics (UiO), the Faculty of Medicine (UiO), and Norway's leading hospitals, such as the Intervention Centre at Oslo University Hospital.
This enables the programme to bring together students from technology and health sciences backgrounds to build healthcare solutions that translate into clinical use.
Career opportunities
The combination of specialised knowledge, project-based learning and close collaboration with our partner organisations prepares you for a range of careers in healthcare technology, research and innovation.
Study environment
You will join a small, interdisciplinary and tightly knit environment with engineers, clinicians, programmers and healthcare professionals learning side by side.
Close interactions with teachers, researchers, hospital partners and fellow students create a dynamic environment, where you can explore ideas, shape your own study path and build a professional network before you graduate.
Great access to workspaces and laboratories
As a student on this master's programme, you will have access to dedicated workspaces shared with your cohort as well as the department's laboratories and prototyping facilities.
Guest lectures by clinicians, HealthTech entrepreneurs and incubator experts, observational sessions at partner hospitals, and joint projects with students from other departments make sure your studies stay connected to the real world.
You can also join student associations and take part in social activities and a wide range of student organisations at the University of Oslo.
Honours certificate
Are you academically ambitious? It is possible to supplement your master's degree with an honours certificate worth 20 credits. You take the certificate concurrently with the master's programme.