Healthcare Award Launched

An award aimed at Irish clinicians and healthcare professionals has been launched today.

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton TD, today has announced the launch of the second Clinical Innovation Award.

Winners of the award will receive a grant of €15,000 and the opportunity to work with Cleveland Clinic and Enterprise Ireland to develop the commercial feasibility of their innovative ideas.

The government hopes this will encourage new healthcare products and services that will "improve patient care and benefit both the health care system and Ireland’s medical technologies sector."

Launching the award, Minister Bruton said:

"We have chosen to target this industry as it offers significant potential for growth and job-creation in the coming years, and Ireland already enjoys some competitive advantages with many of the world’s top companies located here and 50,000 people directly employed.

"The challenge is to build on this, and we are in the process of implementing a number of policy changes to support growth, in particular the establishment of a Healthcare Innovation Hub to bring the health service and industry together to target opportunities."

Dr Niall Davis, a clinician who is specialising in Urology, was last year’s winner and subsequently teamed up with the University of Limerick to develop a new safety device for urinary catheterisation.

"Using the award, we travelled to Cleveland Clinic to get feedback on our device from a broad range of clinical users, including emergency room doctors, urologists and nurses”, he said.

"It was rewarding to get validation for our approach from these users, as well as obtaining valuable feedback on possible alternative uses for the device."

The Award is open to clinicians in hospitals, third level institutions and non-profit research organisations. The closing date for applications is 31 October 2012.

(IT/GK)