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Key
Enablers.
These key enablers are outside of the direct remit of the CHI innovation team but are nonetheless essential aspects of how we will be able to implement this strategy for innovation.
Children’s Research and Innovation Centre (CRIC)
The CRIC will be a purpose-built facility which will enable and facilitate research and innovation on location at the new children’s hospital campus. It will be a hub for both research and innovation, and importantly it will ensure that research and innovation activity are integrated and complimentary. The CRIC will also provide meeting rooms, offices spaces learning and teaching spaces and other resources for CHI research and innovation staff. The CRIC will be an important space to bridge paediatric and adult activity on the campus we share with St James’s Hospital. The CRIC will be complemented by an Innovation Hub in the main hospital building which will be a dedicated workshop space for innovation and collaborative working.
Paediatric Academic Health Science Centre (PAHSC)
All over the world the best healthcare systems combine clinical service, education (training) of health professionals and research/innovation into formal academic health science centres, usually via partnerships of major hospitals, universities and foundations. The triple mission of service, education and research/innovation serves to attract and train the best staff, retain and continually develop them through research and innovation, whilst delivering clinical service with the best outcomes for patients. Currently, CHI and its Dublin academic partners (DCU, RCSI, TCD, UCD) are planning and developing a paediatric AHSC and will be subsequently be extending its reach on an all-island basis via a PAHS network (PAHSN).
This PAHSC/N is an integral part of Sláintecare implementation, Ireland’s medium to long-term health service reform plan. The essence of Sláintecare is the integration of acute and community care in a manner that shifts the focus of healthcare from episodic disease management to health promotion, disease prevention and health maintenance through the life course. As of March 2022 the memorandum of agreement (MOA) for the PAHSC is in the final stages of agreement.
