The establishment of the Innovation Office at TUH in 2021. TUH is a voluntary hospital, with its own Board of Directors and Data Protection Governance. As such TUH is by its nature set up to be a testing site for new innovations. As a voluntary hospital we have the agility to test and evaluate new processes and products for the value of our patients and staff.

Innovate Health at TUH provides a mechanism whereby ideas of change from the frontline can be fostered and developed into a defined project. The project is then evaluated and if successful is transferred to operations and embedded into the business as usual of the hospital. The learnings from this is then disseminated so that the project can be scaled to other healthcare settings. This Hub and Spoke model reduces duplication of effort and cost across the healthcare setting. The team have over 60 projects across clinical process, digital technologies and product development.

Headache Care Pathway– optimising the management of headache patients that present to ED. The initial trial led to significant savings of €240,867 by reducing the need for hospital admissions. The development of this pathway has been recognised by the HSE Bright Spark Award for Best Admissions Avoidance Project and was awarded a place among the top 12 projects honoured at a HSE Spark Innovation Summit.