The Guinness Enterprise Centre, a start-up incubator that houses more than 160 innovative early-stage companies, has launched a new healthcare innovation cluster at St James' Hospital (SJH).
Health@GEC aims to foster collaboration between start-ups, medical practitioners, patients, and problem-solvers and enable greater innovation within the sector from its base at Ireland's largest acute teaching hospital.
GEC hosted a launch event to showcase some of the activity already underway and to seek new partners to join the budding ecosystems. Some 20 healthcare companies are already engaged in the cluster, ranging from start-ups to established international firms.
Projects currently in progress include those focused on specialised clinical research and training, with others involving technologies to support patients – both bedside and outside the hospital setting – alleviating universal capacity issues.
The cluster has also attracted interest internationally from non-clinical partners that wish to participate as well as major global healthcare players.
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Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, has visited the cluster, and it hosted a visit from the Enterprise Ireland Global Healthcare Forum earlier this year.
"The Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Programme, a partnership between campus colleagues SJH and Children’s Health Ireland (CHI), has been working with the GEC on a multi-disciplinary pilot programme to support adolescents and young adults living with cancer in a non-clinical setting.
CHI has also been using the GEC as a base for innovation workshops and upskilling healthcare workers to use Design Thinking to help solve complex challenges. CHI joins Health@GEC as an ecosystem partner, significantly increasing the potential for collaboration and open innovation for the group.
Speaking at the event, Orla Veale, programme director for the Academic Health Science centre at SJH, said: “St James’ recognises the value of open innovation to ensure it remains a leading healthcare organisation nationally and internationally, but also to continue to meet the needs of our patients into the future.”
Paul Anglim, health lead at GEC added: “Health@GEC promotes innovation in heath by linking healthcare providers and institutions with companies and a supporting ecosystem of partners and investors.
"It is a hub from which innovators can access the network, locations, supports and people to bring their product to market successfully, thereby improving patient outcomes and new product adoption.”
Photo: Pictured at the launch of Health@GEC are (L-R) Donal Morris, CEO and Founder of medical startup Red Zinc, Dr Paul Anglim, Health Lead, Guinness Enterprise Centre and Orla Veale, Programme Director for the Academic Health Science Centre at St James’ Hospital.
