CERC’s Design, Innovation and Clinical Entrepreneurship (DICE) Fellowship
CERC’s Design Fellowship provides early-career aspiring innovators and healthcare leaders
an opportunity to gain knowledge, skills, and experience in health care delivery innovation
that results in better care at lower cost. We are seeking postdoctoral scholars, physicians,
and postdoctoral nurse scientists who are aspiring innovators and future leaders of higher value
health care design.
Since the program’s inception a decade ago, 54 fellows from a wide variety of backgrounds have completed this 11-month fellowship, drawing from the fields of health care, social sciences, engineering, and behavioral and management sciences.
Working in multi-disciplinary teams, CERC’s design fellows focus on a single health condition associated with substantial disability and health spending. The goal is an innovative a health care delivery model built to lower population-wide health spending to the maximum extent while improving quality and experience of care.
Fellows will also receive education and mentoring related to the business side of health care innovation to best prepare them for disseminating higher value care, including training in how present to leaders of health systems, venture capital, and health plans.
The Clinical Excellence Research Center is directed by Arnold Milstein, MD, MPH, Stanford professor of medicine and a national leader in the acceleration of clinical service innovations that improve the societal value of health care. The fellowship is directed by Terry Platchek, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, with additional leadership from Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, Senior Scholar at CERC and Dr. Milstein, as well as a collaborating health economic research center at Harvard Medical School. Distinguished national guest faculty and visiting scholars also participate in the training and ongoing mentorship of fellows.
The program begins in August 2022 for a term of one year. Fellows are expected to devote a minimum of 80% of their time to fellowship activities during their fellowship period. Admission is on a rolling basis; candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. For further information and to apply, please contact Heather Cushnie at cercinquiry@stanford.edu. Applicants are asked to include a CV and cover letter describing their interest.
"CERC has launched a whole new career for me as a subject matter expert in using technology and digital health tools to better diagnose, measure, and treat disease in novel cost-effective ways particularly as it relates to pharmaceuticals. The people I had the privilege of meeting, the skills I learned, the methodology we practiced, and the need to thrive in ambiguity at CERC, were all instrumental to helping me thrive in the fast-paced health start-up and biotech industries."
Scooter Plowman
Medical Director, Head of Digital Medicine at Amgen
Through the design of care models, CERC teams uncover scalable cost-effective methods of care delivery in the US and globally. Many are enhanced via new capabilities emerging from advances in science and technology, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence. CERC also embeds features that address the most deeply felt unmet human needs of patients, families, and their clinicians.
Some program graduates continue to work at CERC and Stanford, while others have assumed leadership positions in health care delivery systems, joined industry or professional services firms, or helped launch venture-based health care startups.
"In the ICU setting, we often see the patients who fall through the cracks of our healthcare system: the patient whose inhaler wasn't covered by insurance who now has an asthma exacerbation, or the young woman with a breast mass who delayed her mammogram out of fear of medical bills, now with widespread disease. On many days I felt that I was treating a broken healthcare system rather than my patients. The CERC fellowship provided me with the tools and insight to better understand the healthcare system around me, equipping me to become an agent of change in a complex and evolving field."
Andrea Jonas, MD
Fellow, Pulmonary and Critical Care
Stanford University