Smart D8 Showcase 2025 Highlights Innovation in Population Health
Smart D8 Showcase 2025 Highlights Whole-of-Society Innovation in Population Health
The recent Smart D8 Showcase brought together innovators, researchers, community partners and entrepreneurs to explore the future of population health and wellbeing. This year’s edition was hosted in the Digital Depot at The Digital Hub, spotlighting pioneering pilot projects and initiatives tackling real-world health challenges in the heart of Ireland’s capital city.
Smart D8, Dublin’s first smart district dedicated to addressing community health in the heart of Dublin 8, is a population health demonstrator committed to improving the wellbeing of nearly 45,000 citizens living, working and studying in Dublin 8. It provides opportunities for innovators to collaboratively demonstrate innovative content and technology to enhance population health outcomes locally and beyond.
This year’s showcase featured presentations and roundtables from 2024–2025 pilot project leaders, ranging across themes such as heart health, men’s health and early-stage cancer detection. Highlights of the first panel, “Piloting Next-Generation Population Health,” included:
- PRiCAN Research Group at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, for LISTEN (Leveraging an AI Scribe Tool to Detect Early Non-Specific Symptoms of Cancer) — prompting clinicians on early cancer indicators, helping ensure subtle cancer symptoms don’t go unnoticed
- patientMpower in collaboration with St James’s Hospital Heart Support Unit, for the Smart Heart initiative — supporting citizens’ remote monitoring for biomarkers associated with heart failure progression
- D8 Astro Football by Football Cooperative CLG in collaboration with Dublin City Council — developing a Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework for men’s health with partners such as South East Technological University, University College Dublin, Local Sports Partnerships and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI)
- Ongoing Smart D8 community engagement initiatives — led by Smart D8 Community Coordinator, Ana Coughlan, and core collaborators such as The Liberties Community Project
The second panel, “Beyond Pilots – Scaling Outcomes, Lessons and Learnings,” brought together key roundtable speakers for post-pilot impacts from 2024, including initiatives from Kids Speech Labs, Dublin Simon Community, CP-Life Research Centre at RCSI, and Outlandish Theatre (OT) Platform in collaboration with the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and Trinity College Dublin.
The event ended with an engaging networking session, fostering continued collaboration across the Smart D8 partnership, collaborators, and extended innovator and community networks; all committed to driving next-generation innovations in population health and wellbeing.
By fostering connections between citizens and service-providers, Smart D8 presents a unique opportunity for innovators to explore how innovative content and technologies can collaboratively improve health and wellbeing with an urban population. Smart D8 is looking to engage and collaborate with enterprises, academic institutions, and public and private sector organisations who wish to market validate their solutions with the local community to demonstrate measurable impacts on social and economic determinants of health to scale.
Smart D8’s achievements have earned widespread recognition, including HealthTech Innovation of the Year finalist (Public Sector Digital Transformation Awards 2023), Innovation in Public Administration (EPSA 2023-24), Digital Community finalist (.ie Digital Town Awards 2024), and overall Citizen Engagement winner with MoveAhead (eGovernment Awards 2025).