Healthcare Finance

15.482x Healthcare Finance is an MIT Sloan course by Andrew Lo, with Shomesh Chaudhuri and Zied Ben Chaouch, offered free in MIT's Open Learning Library. Its starting point is that funding for fundamental science and early-stage translational medicine is becoming scarcer just as the scientific expertise to treat many deadly diseases has arrived, a gap often called the Valley of Death. The course attributes this to rising financial risk and uncertainty in the biopharma industry and argues that applying financial techniques such as portfolio theory, securitisation and option pricing to biomedical settings can reduce risk, lower the cost of capital and bring therapies to patients faster.

The learning objectives cover basic financial analysis for life-sciences professionals, the historical risks and returns of biopharma, capital budgeting for pharmaceutical companies, drug development and clinical trials, the mechanics of biotech startup financing, biomedical megafunds and drug royalty companies, healthcare analytics and machine learning, and pricing, value and ethics. The course consists of lectures and practice problems, lists no prerequisites, and is estimated at 13 weeks; the catalogue lists 6 hours per week. The page notes the course is archived on edX with certificate enrolment closed; in the Open Learning Library it is self-paced, free, and has no certificate.