Four New Pilot Projects to Transform Health & Wellness Outcomes Announced by Smart D8

Smart D8, the Smart Dublin demonstrator focused on improving health and wellbeing outcomes in an urban population, has today announced the successful applicants from their third call for pilot projects. 60 applications from private and public organisations were received during the pilot call, and of these four innovative projects have been selected. The successful projects will share a €50,000 fund to advance their existing work, and include:

• Menopause and the City from Dr Louise Fitzgerald of Grafton Medical Practice/InforMD.ie. This pilot is seeking to create a better educational ecosystem around menopause health for both individuals as well as families and friends. A project with truly scalable potential, Dr Louise Fitzgerald is aiming for Dublin 8 to become the centre of the first city-wide approach to positive menopause education and support.
• Brace from Conor Motyer. Brace is a community-based recovery app which seeks to assist patients who are undergoing physical rehabilitation. With an added focus on the mental wellness aspect of rehabilitation, Brace uses exercise tracking, gamification and community support to improve both recovery engagement and mental health outcomes arising from their research has found that rehab program completion rates can be as low as 50%.
• MoveAhead from Dr Jamie McGann and Dr Johann Issartel. MoveAhead is based on years of clinical experience from both founders, as well as practical research carried out with the GAA which has found that children’s movement skills are deteriorating in line with increased use of screens and technology. MoveAhead is the world’s first motion tracking and movement analytics platform built specifically for children, which informs games to assist with improving children’s movement skills.
• Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) Identifier from Dr Brian Kent/St James’s Hospital. OSA Identifier is seeking to reduce the wait time for a sleep apnea diagnosis, which is currently up to two years. OSA Identifier has developed an app to provide at-home data which can be reviewed by clinical specialists and both inform and speed up diagnosis and treatment options for sleep apnea.

Making the announcement of the successful pilot projects, Jack Lehane, Smart D8 Ecosystem Manager, said: “We were really impressed with the quality of applications for our most recent call for pilots. With the four successful projects we are confident that they have potential to address issues and conditions that are impacting large numbers of people. One thing which particularly stood out was the potential many of them have to scale. At the heart of Smart D8 is cross-sectoral collaboration that allows healthcare innovation to be fast tracked and these projects will greatly enable this.”

The projects will be rolled out in coming months.

The Smart D8 Consortium includes Dublin City Council, Smart Dublin, The Digital Hub, St James’s Hospital, St Patrick’s Mental Health Services, National College of Art & Design, Tyndall National Institute, TCD’s Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, The GEC, Health Innovation Hub Ireland and HSE Digital Transformation.

You can find out more about Smart D8 at: https://smartdublin.ie/smart-districts/smart-d8/