An Academic Health Science System (AHSS) is a fully coordinated partnership between a university and a healthcare system, designed to deliver quality care hand-in-hand with teaching, training, research and innovation, incorporating the full spectrum of the healthcare workforce. AHSSs provide high quality healthcare across the world achieving high standards of clinical care, educating health professionals and leading healthcare research and innovation. Ireland lags significantly behind its international counterparts with regard to AHSSs.
No. An AHSS is a way of aligning current structures and using a governance model to achieve better outcomes for patients and staff. It requires little additional administration but rather harnesses the current inputs to work together. At present, healthcare, education and research are aligned as they all aim to provide the best outcomes for patients. However, the absence of a unifying governance structure means that the decision-making and operational processes are misaligned, the administrative overhead is too burdensome and opportunities for change initiatives are lost.
Sláintecare presents a unique opportunity to align Irish healthcare with its partners in education, clinical research, informatics, innovation and healthcare delivery. This will allow healthcare professionals, from a wide variety of disciplines, to come together with scientists and clinical researchers to deliver consistent high quality, evidence-based, safe healthcare, research and innovation.
For further information, please visit the UCD Health Affairs website.
Work is currently underway in IEHG
to develop the Hospital Group into an Academic Health Science Centre in
partnership with UCD. This will be done through collaboration across the
traditional boundaries between education, health and scientific research to
enable the discovery of innovative health improvements as well as providing
care in new ways, with the objective to align and leverage expertise,
innovation, reputation and performance to deliver improved health outcomes and
patient experiences.
Our focus through this
transformation journey will be the pooling of resources and expertise in the
first instance through the development of Clinical Academic Directorates across
our hospitals to enable the development of world-class research in key areas
such as cancer, ophthalmology, cardiology, women’s and children’s health.
It is anticipated that building close partnerships between health practitioners
and researchers will also enable new scientific discoveries to be translated
more quickly into patient treatments and improved clinical outcomes.
The Cancer Clinical Academic
Directorate is the first Clinical Academic Directorate developed in the Ireland
East Hospital Group and was launched in June 2016 by IEHG CEO Mary Day and the
Director of the National Cancer Control Programme Dr Jerome Coffey.
The aim of the Directorate is to
align the two cancer centres at the Mater Misericordiae
University Hospital and St. Vincent’s University Hospital into a single
function operating across two sites which will combine the strength and scale
of our clinical cancer services at both hospitals together with the cutting
edge research of UCD to enhance the care given to cancer patients across our
Group.
Our staff are dedicated to
improving the outcomes and experience for our patients with cancer by providing
expert, compassionate care for every patient, every time.
Clinicians
from our hospitals have started working together in a formal structure,
harnessing our significant academic and clinical expertise to enhance the
delivery of patient care and improve outcomes.
cancercad@iehg.ie