The Healthcare team supporting the Cork Healthcare Innovation Hub ran an excellent day long meeting November 6th on breaking down the barriers to healthcare innovation. Minister Damien English attended along with approximately 120 interested parties from cinical medicine, academia, health related industries, the HSE and a wide range of the support network behind HIH notably members of the national project team. Also represented were the enterprise agencies and members of the local advisory board.
Great credit is due to Dr Colman Casey, interim Director of HiH and Tanya Mulcahy of HiH UCC who with their team organised an excellent programme of speakers from healthcare, industry, HSE procurement, NPRA (formerly the Irish Medicines Board) and of course the Chairman of the Cork healthcare innovation hub, Prof John Higgin's. As usual John provided a tour de force in his presentation. There can hardly be a Tyrone man nationally who is not prouder than this man is of his hometown by the Lee and the progress he is part of in terms of health delivery and regional development.
The net point visible and palpable from all the attendees is that the Cork demonstrator project has helped to secure alignment between industry and the health system and the agenda of using our healthcare system to become a catalyst for health innovation which leads to exports, job creation and more taxes to support national health delivery.
Dr Brian O'Neill of Enterprise Ireland emphasised how concentrated the Irish Life Sciences industry is, its extraordinary contribution to exports, employment and innovation and how the Irish cluster is world leading, except in terms of its capacity to promote, sponsor and scale domestic innovation. This is what the National Programme behind HiH is designed to address.
There was a great atmosphere and the HSE presentation on procurement was especially relevant pointing out how government procurement itself must play a role in prioritising strategic innovation. One example is the present development of the National E-Health Strategy which not only must connect the Irish healthcare system in a way that not has been done before, but must leverage technology and its benefits to drive productivity, efficiency and flexibility into a delivery model which is presently rigid and too focused on its internal problems.
Dr John Hinchion Cardiothoracic surgeon from Cork University Hospital gave a great presentation on the endoscopic application of electroporation therapy wth cytotoxic co-administration in lung cancer presently being trialled in Cork. Developed by Dr Declan Soden of the Cork Cancer Research Centre, and pioneered by the late great surgeon, Prof Gerry O'Sullivan of Mercy Hospital Cork, the technology has been challenging to develop and continues on its way. From Dr Hinchion's presentation, one can envisage a therapeutic intervention into lung tumours of advanced disease. Such an application holds promise for palliation in patients who to date have seen little improvement in their 5 year prognosis in 30 years. We all can hope the trials proceed well. I was deeply impressed at the demonstration of teamwork and resilience the journey to date has required. As the old adage goes ..."the patients are waiting"..
Dr Hinchion is a great example of the Irish mind - a calm and warm demeanour aligned to a devastating intellect. There are many clinician's and healthcare professionals like him working across the health system but we are not connecting them nor concentrating them into networks and groups resourced to innovate.
I applaud the work of the Health Research Board and Science Foundation Ireland in incentivising research, however we need a national mindset change and a total reprioritisation between government departments especially in health and enterprise to find more money to stimulate innovation and disruptive reform.
My take away from the day was not only did I learn new things I had not known before, it reinforced my strong conviction that only by working together in a unified way can we be successful in driving innovation out from our healthcare system and supporting innovation in from industry and SME's.
We have a great opportunity in Ireland to join the leaders in this space. We will only be successful if we challenge strongly the array of impediments and obstacles we all encounter daily in thinking how to bring Irish innovation to patients across our national health system.