The relationships between teaching and work, services and education are of great importance for health education and for the consolidation of the Unified Health System (SUS), enabling the construction and dissemination of knowledge and the development of strategies and tactics for occupying spaces in the care network, requiring pedagogical projects that integrate with services and teaching-assistance work. 

UFRN is responsible for educating nurses, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nutritionists, physical therapists, biologists, among others. A large part of these programs require practical training in hospitals. In addition to these, graduate programs take place entirely in these services. Thus, the Federal University Hospitals, through medical and multiprofessional residencies, provide the country with specialists who should provide quality care to the population and researchers, who contribute to advances in science, technology and innovation in health, and who correspond to a portion of the demand for this proposed Professional Master in question.

From this perspective, the program aims to contribute to scientific and technological development and professional training in health, in line with Education, Health, and Science, Technology and Innovation policies. It is based on the principle of effectiveness, understood as the desired performance regarding the transformation of a reality, which points to necessary economic and institutional changes that should result from public policies.

It is expected that the student who graduates from this program will be able to issue a critical opinion based on scientific and technological knowledge, taking into account the participation of other professionals, presenting the interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity experienced and discussed during the professional master's degree training period. They should also have a professional profile capable of changing applied procedures and methodologies, influencing good practices with legal, scientific and ethical basis, in addition to proactiveness.

Under the area of concentration "Management and Innovation in Health", the Professional Master's Degree in Management and Innovation in Health of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte has the following lines of research: 

LINE 1 – Health Education: Includes the formulation of Health Education focused on the Permanent Health Education Policy, based on the principles and guidelines of the Unified Health System (SUS), and aims to implement processes with the capacity to impact teaching, sectoral management, care practices, and social control in health. 

LINE 2 – Health Management: Includes the Public Health Policies of the Unified Health System and the management and operational methods of the various public or private health centers. It seeks to build new roles for care and management in the Health System based on the use of the Health Policies framework, personnel management, and work performance. 

LINE 3 – Health Technology: Includes resource management focused on the productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of new technologies. It aims to analyze and discuss relevant issues in the health sector from an economic perspective, the health technology market, innovation and production of health technologies, and successful models of national and international innovation systems.

The creation of the PPgGIS (Graduate Program in Management and Innovation in Health) is closely connected to the history of the Laboratory of Technological Innovation in Health (LAIS), which deserves special mention. LAIS, created in 2008 with the motto "science, an instrument of love for others," is the first laboratory installed in a Brazilian university hospital with the purpose of promoting technological innovation in health, aiming to improve the quality of services for the entire population. Its scope encompasses three areas of activity: Management, Care, and Education in health, allowing the directly linked faculty to conceive the PPgGIS with research lines fully aligned with the mission and vision of LAIS. Thus, the PPgGIS began and continues with all the physical and functional structure and activities of the professors/researchers at LAIS. In addition to having access to all the laboratory's infrastructure, students also utilize other spaces at the renowned UFRN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) (more details in the infrastructure section).