Alot of credit should go the organisers, participants and speakers at the recent IMSTA Annual Conference held March 25th in the Crowne Plaza, Santry. IMSTA represent the Irish Medical and Surgical Trade Association.
Dr Johnnie Walker as MC did an excellent job presenting a wide range of speakers from the healthcare system, industry, the HSE and medical coalface.
The conference was opened by Mr Tony O'Brien Director General of the HSE. Important HSE functions such as HSE procurement were represented by John Sword and speakers such as Maureen Cronin who spoke with clarity and directly to the issues in healthcare at hand.
The programme was a lively and varied mixture of innovation related presentations from Dr Colman Casey of the Cork Healthcare Innovation Hub, Dr Deirdre McMahon of TAGG - a gastroenterology focused research team in Trinity Health, based in Tallaght Hospital and Prof Niel O'Hare director of informatics St James. Dr Michael Power who is national clinical lead in critical care gave an outstanding synopsis of how little Irish Health Infrastructure developed since the foundation of the state. Numerous reports going back to the 1920's identified the benefits of a Hub and Spoke model for hospital care nationally to cope with complex patients - political interference and using hospitals as vote catchers means joined up thinking was never applied in co-ordinating Hospital locations and structures. We have been suffering the consequences since.
My former colleague Brenda Dooley who is CEO of Axis consulting outlined how pharmacoeconomic assessment and quality based outcomes are now part of the health provisioning landscape. Brenda is providing excellent service to companies who need to be able to reflect financial realities and value based pricing for new products. More power to her !!
Anne Blackwood CEO of Health Enterprise East in UK underlined why industry engagement in pre-procurement matters and how it can be achieved within state aid and procurement boundaries. The UK's SBRI (Small Business Research and Innovation Scheme) badly needs reflection in Ireland, something I hope the new National Healthcare Innovation Hub will help drive.
Speaking of NHIH - applications are in and the next stage of choosing the configuration of the National Hub is now progressing with the support of external experts and a robust process of selection developed by Enterprise Ireland - watch this space.
Finally go check out presentations from the meeting - I've been to alot of programmes in healthcare. This was certainly one of the best I've attended recently.
see www.imsta.ie
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