HIHI Dublin welcomes Angela Constance MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care and Christine McLaughlin, CEO NHS Scotland
A senior Scottish Government delegation led by Angela Constance MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care, visited St James’s Hospital to learn how Ireland is reforming it’s health systems and specially on health innovation in St James’s. The visit was part of a wider trip which saw the delegation meet with our Minster for Health, Jennifer Carroll-MacNeil TD, and the CEO of the HSE, Anne O’ Connor. The delegation included:
- Christine McLaughlin, Director-General for Health and Social Care and Chief Executive of NHS Scotland
- Gillian Russell, Director for Health Workforce
- Lauren Jefferies, Deputy Private Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary
- Martin McDermott, Head of the Scottish Government Ireland Office
- Keith Marin, Scottish Enterprise
Mary Day, CEO of St James’s Hospital, welcomed the visitors and presented the hospital’s vision for a leading European academic health science campus with Professor Barry White, Clinical Director of Strategy and Planning. The delegation then heard from: the Wellcome HRB Clinical Research Facility; the Medical Innovation Lab; the hospital’s Centre for Human Factors
Eimear Galvin, HIHI Dublin Manager and GreenTech in Health Lead, presented HIHI’s role in Ireland’s innovation ecosystem. Eimear also outlined HIHI’s sustainability work. A central theme of the discussion was how innovations move from successful pilot to permanent service. Delegates shared Scotland’s experience of the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) Pathway. ANIA provides a single national route from horizon scanning to funded, system-wide rollout: Government funds the first one to two years of implementation, and health boards then take on the running costs.
The visit closed with a discussion on shared innovation challenges, building innovation capability across the workforce, scaling successful innovations, and opportunities for future collaboration and knowledge exchange between Scotland and Ireland