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Right then, let’s start with a confession. We couldn’t have planned it better if we’d tried. Next week, both the Irish Healthcare Awards and our new Patient Solutions Conference take place under the same roof — the Clayton Hotel, Burlington Road, Dublin — a kind of all-day festival of ideas, debate and celebration for Irish healthcare. We like to think of it as two sides of the same coin: serious discussions in the morning, serious applause in the evening. From our point of view as organisers, the Patient Solutions Conference is the perfect way to start the day. It’s our newest creation — a meeting of minds where clinicians, innovators, technologists, policymakers and patients come together to talk about what really matters — how to make healthcare more humane, more efficient, and frankly, less maddening. The focus is deliberately practical. We’re not promising flying hospitals or robot nurses (not yet, anyway). We’re talking about the kind of innovations that make life easier for both patients and professionals — digital tools that actually save time, systems that talk to each other, and models of care that put people before paperwork. If you’ve ever spent half an hour on hold trying to make an appointment, you’ll understand why “Patient Solutions” feels like more than a title — it’s a mission. Once the conference winds down and the name badges start to look a little frayed, the room will transform. The chairs are swapped for linen-covered tables, the lights dim, and we launch into the Irish Healthcare Awards — now in their twenty-fourth year, and, dare we say, looking better than ever despite their age. It’s our chance to honour the extraordinary work being done across Ireland’s healthcare system — the researchers, clinicians, community leaders and innovators who somehow manage to improve care, in spite of the chaos that sometimes surrounds them. There’s something deeply satisfying about celebrating success in the very same place where new ideas were being debated hours earlier. We go from ‘’how can we make this better?’ to ‘look how far we’ve come’ — all in a single day. One of the highlights of this year’s daytime event will be the presence of the Secretary General of the Department of Health, who will be joining us to take questions directly from attendees. It’s not every day that the top civil servant in Irish healthcare sits down in front of a room full of clinicians, innovators and patients to have an honest, unscripted conversation about the system’s direction. We like to think of it as a sign of genuine engagement — a willingness to talk about what’s working, what isn’t, and how to bridge the gap between policy and practice. It’s also, if we’re honest, rather brave of Mr Watt. But we’re here for engagement and discussion, not vilification. As organisers, we’ve had the privilege of seeing extraordinary projects come through our awards over the years. There was the Sligo Leitrim Mental Health Service that created a person-centred crisis resolution team — reducing hospital admissions while treating people closer to home. That project didn’t just win an award — it became a model for what compassionate, evidence-based reform looks like. Then there was the Pillar Centre for Transformative Healthcare, which turned a hospital campus into a living laboratory for training, innovation and collaboration. And in recent years, we’ve seen technology take a more central role — not as a flashy gimmick, but as a genuine tool for change. In 2024, for example, we celebrated AI-assisted MRI imaging at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, virtual reality for chronic pain therapy in Limerick, and the rollout of eTrauma systems that cut waiting times in busy hospitals. These aren’t abstract concepts — they’re solutions already changing lives. That, ultimately, is what keeps us running these events. The magic of healthcare innovation isn’t in some distant future — it’s happening right now, often in quiet corners of the country, usually led by people too modest to shout about it. If there’s a thread running through both the conference and the awards, it’s this: the future of healthcare depends on connection. Technology alone won’t save us; it’s how we use it. Policy won’t fix everything; it’s how we implement it. Innovation only works when it’s grounded in empathy, humility and partnership with patients — not as subjects, but as co-creators. That’s why ‘Patient Solutions’ isn’t just a conference title; it’s a statement of intent. We want to bring people together who might not normally share a stage — clinicians beside coders, administrators beside advocates — to figure out how to make Irish healthcare not just better but kinder. And then, in the evening, we’ll raise a glass to the people already doing exactly that. To anyone attending both events, we promise you’ll feel the continuity. The morning is about how; the evening is about who. You’ll hear the same themes echoing through both — innovation, collaboration, compassion, technology — but from different angles. By the time the awards dinner begins, you’ll have met the people shaping the future, debated the tough questions, and probably scribbled more notes than you expected. And then, as the lights come up and the music starts, you’ll see those same ideas rewarded, applauded, and, we hope, celebrated into action. There’s a kind of poetry in it: the same room, the same people, two completely different moods. Coffee in the morning, champagne at night. Brainstorming at 10am, dancing by 10pm. If there’s one subject that binds the entire day, it’s the intersection of technology and care. Every year, we see new examples of Irish ingenuity — small teams using data analytics to predict hospital admissions, wearable sensors that spot deteriorating patients before humans can, or AI-driven chatbots guiding rare-disease patients through complex care journeys. It’s tempting to treat these as novelties, but the truth is they’re the scaffolding of healthcare’s future. Used well, technology will give clinicians more time to be human — to look patients in the eye instead of at a monitor. Used badly, it becomes another layer of frustration. Our job, as conveners of these conversations, is to keep that balance in sight: to champion innovation, but never at the expense of empathy. Ireland is at an inflection point in healthcare. The infrastructure is improving, the digital backbone is taking shape, and the appetite for change is real. What we need now is coherence — a way to align the ambition of individual innovators with the machinery of policy and procurement. That’s partly why we’re so pleased to have the Department of Health represented at the highest level this year. It’s a reminder that while awards recognise achievement, conferences like Patient Solutions lay the groundwork for what comes next. And if we can help even a handful of people connect the dots between those two halves — turning a good idea into an implemented solution — then we’ll count the day a success. So, yes, it’s going to be a long day. There will be coffee cups everywhere, an occasional lost delegate looking for the right conference room, and probably a few frantic PowerPoint updates right before showtime. But there will also be energy, optimism and a sense — rare but precious — that we’re all pulling in (roughly) the same direction. From our side of the podium, that’s the real reward: seeing Ireland’s healthcare community come together, not just to talk about problems, but to share solutions and celebrate the people who make them happen. We can’t wait to see you at the Clayton Hotel Burlington Road — for a day of ideas, a night of recognition, and a glimpse of what healthcare could look like when innovation, compassion and a good dose of Irish practicality meet in the same room.
