Tag: Population Health

Smart D8 Showcase 2025 Highlights Innovation in Population Health

Posted on by info@smartd8.ie

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).

Registrations Now Open for Smart D8 Showcase 2025

Posted on by info@smartd8.ie

Registrations Now Open for Smart D8 Showcase 2025

 

Registration is now open for Smart D8’s annual Showcase Event, scheduled for Thu 30th October 2025 at the Digital Depot at The Digital Hub (Bay 01), Dublin 8! Join us for a morning filled with innovative talks, inspiring roundtable and networking opportunities. Discover the latest advancements in population health and wellbeing and how they are shaping the future. Whether you’re an industry professional, entrepreneur, researcher, healthy communities advocate or simply a health enthusiast curious about what’s next, this event is perfect for you. Get ready to be witness what the future holds at the Smart D8 Showcase 2025.

The Smart D8 Showcase is an in-person event; to hear more about the latest Smart D8 pilot projects’ innovations in population health and wellbeing, ranging across themes including (but not limited to) heart health, men’s health, and early-stage cancer detection. The showcase will give attendees an opportunity to:

  • Learn about the collaboration from across 12 different public-facing organisations as part of the Smart D8 consortium.
  • Experience the innovations happening through presentations from 2024 and 2025 Smart D8 pilot representatives.
  • Meet Smart D8’s networks and collaborators, and explore future collaboration opportunities.

Panel 1 : Piloting Next-Generation Population Health (2025)
[ Format : Presentation + Q&A ]

  • A: Early-Stage Cancer Detection, by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences | Speakers: Catherine Devereux, Artificial Intelligence Research Scientist and Dr. Conor Murphy, General Practitioner and Aspire Clinical Research Fellow at RCSI University of Medicine & Health Sciences
  • B: Smart Heart, by PatientMPower in collaboration with St James’s Hospital | Speaker: Eimear Kelly, Digital Health Solutions Specialist at patientMpower
  • C: D8 Astro Football, by Football Cooperative CLG | Speaker: Steven O’Connell, CEO and Founder at Football Cooperative CLG
  • D: Smart D8 Community Engagement, by Smart D8 and collaborators incl. The Liberties Community Project (TLCP) | Speaker: Ana Coughlan, Community Coordinator at Smart D8
  • Group Panel Q&A

Panel 2 : Beyond Pilots – Scaling Outcomes, Lessons and Learnings (2024)
[ Format : Roundtable // Shared Q&A ]

  • A: Kids Speech Labs, by Kids Speech Labs Ltd. | Speaker: Dr. Shona D’Arcy, Founder at Kids Speech Labs
  • B: Digital Medication Management System, by Dublin Simon Community | Speaker: Samantha Makiwa, Senior Manager in Clinical Governance & Therapeutic Services at Dublin Simon Community
  • C: Access Information Map, by CP-Life Research Centre at RCSI | Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Fortune, Senior Research Fellow & Research Programme Lead at CP-Life Research Centre at RCSI 
  • D: Brain Health, by Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI)/Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with Outlandish Theatre (OT) Platform | Speaker: Maud Hendricks, Artist and Co-Director at Outlandish Theatre (OT) Platform

The event will include presentations from Smart D8 partners and the latest cohorts of pilots, panel roundtable discussions and Q&A, and conclude with on-site networking opportunities.

Register via Eventbrite Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-d8-showcase-2025-tickets-1737599449729

See some of our 2023 Showcase Event below!

Smart D8 x MoveAhead Overall Citizen Engagement Winner at eGovernment Awards 2025

Posted on by info@smartd8.ie

 

Smart D8, in collaboration with MoveAhead, were nationally recognised as overall Citizen Engagement winner at the Ireland eGovernment Awards 2025.

Led by Jamie McGann and Johann Issartel, MoveAhead is the world’s first AI-powered and movement analytics platform built specifically for children. One of four Smart D8 pilots from 2023 and an ADAPT-DCU spin-out, MoveAhead brought its movement-based app and games to schools and after-schools in the Dublin 8 community to co-design a “Smart Moves” curriculum, to tackle the sedentary crisis in childhood in the digital age. Through the Smart D8 pilot, MoveAhead’s community outreach was able to engage a range of local schools and after schools partnerships in Dublin 8 such as The Liberties Community Project (TLCP — formerly SICCDA; South Inner City Community Development Association) to co-design and deliver a movement curriculum for children’s motor skills. In doing so, MoveAhead identified an underutilised space for engaging with citizens to achieve health and social impacts outside of traditional healthcare settings, it equipped teachers and carers with the tools to measure childhood movement, and it empowered over 500 children and their families to co-develop their own movement curriculum which led to measurable improvement in their movement skills to improve their health and wellbeing.

Findings and teacher feedback demonstrated that consistent delivery of the physical literacy programme can drive lasting improvements in children’s motor skills. In terms of health, it delivered measurable improvements in children’s motor competence and boosted confidence in physical activity. The programme advanced equity by reaching underserved communities through Smart D8, The Digital Hub pilot champion, and trusted local partners such as The Liberties Community Project. It promoted digital inclusion with GDPR- and KidSafe-compliant tools that encouraged active, not passive, screen use — with raw data of movement anonymised by default; setting a new precedent for responsible data management. The project also proved highly scalable, continuing to grow through subsequent partnerships and stakeholders in the education sector: https://libertiesdublin.ie/d8-kids-moving-ahead

The awards ceremony took place on Thursday 18th September at UCD O’Reilly Hall, Belfield. The guest of honour at the Awards ceremony was Minister Jack Chambers TD, Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Services, Reform and Digitalisation, who joined on behalf of An Taoiseach.

Smart D8 Population Health Survey Series

Posted on by info@smartd8.ie

How can people have more say in improving health and wellbeing in their communities?

This question is at the heart of a community-focused project led by The Digital Hub and Tyndall National Institute through the Smart D8 partnership, Boehringer Ingelheim, and local organisations in Dublin 8.

This project explores whether everyday digital tools, such as smartphones, smartwatches and smart rings, can support more personalised and fair approaches to health and wellbeing.

What better way to gather people’s views and understand the real challenges of everyday life than to survey the population of Dublin 8. The Dublin 8 community is already leading the way in improving health and wellbeing.

Including people who live, work and study in Dublin 8 helps build a clear picture of health and wellbeing needs. We hope to understand preferences around digital devices,  learn about the general health and wellbeing needs of our local community, and explore opportunities for more effective and personalised public health supports through wearable technologies. It has been designed to be inclusive, simple and anonymous. It can help shape future projects, such as where people may choose to share anonymous health data from their devices to help find early signs of health issues (“digital biomarkers”) and improve health outcomes.

By participating, you’ll help us build a more responsive and inclusive digital health future — starting in Dublin 8.
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To participate, please click here.