What is an Academic Health Sciences System?

An AHSS is a fully coordinated partnership between a university and a healthcare system, designed to deliver quality care hand-in-hand with teaching, training, research and innovation, incorporating the full spectrum of the healthcare workforce.

AHSS’s are intended to ensure that medical research breakthroughs lead to direct clinical benefits for patients. They provide high quality healthcare across the world. Ireland lags significantly behind its international counterparts with regard to AHSSs.

UCC Academic Health Sciences works with the six Schools within the College of Medicine & Health; Medicine, Nursing & Midwifery, Dentistry, Public Health, Clinical Therapies, and Pharmacy, to provide a formal channel for cooperation and collaboration between the South South-West Hospital Group (SSWHG) and UCC, its primary academic partner. This includes developing and implementing the strategic vision and direction for healthcare education, research and innovation across the group and ultimately the successful creation of an Academic Health Science System. 

The South South-West Hospital Group, with its associated General Practices, Community Health Organisations and academic partner UCC, is evolving into an integrated Academic Health Science System in a fundamental reshaping of the hospital-university model. The strategic shift reflects international experience demonstrating that the integration of education and research in an AHSS model improves staff education, patient care and research thus contributes to innovation and the knowledge economy.  

The establishment of the hospital groups in 2013, including the development of SSWHG, and the current work being done to set up 6 Regional Health Areas (RHAs), anticipated to be fully operational in 2024, presents a unique opportunity within the Irish healthcare system to build on the excellence of our hospitals, combined with the innovation, research and educational excellence provided by UCC to deliver consistent high quality safe healthcare outcomes and the world class healthcare patients deserve. 

Why an Academic Health Science System? 

1. Provide better outcomes for patients
2. Ensure a stepwise improvement in staff recruitment and retention

Why now? 

Sláintecare presents a unique opportunity to align Irish healthcare with its partners in education, clinical research, informatics, innovation and healthcare delivery. This will allow healthcare professionals, from a wide variety of disciplines, to come together with scientists and clinical researchers to deliver consistent high quality, evidence-based, safe healthcare, research and innovation. 

What is required to deliver this Academic Health Science System? 

• An accountable and integrated system incorporating a joint approach to administrative, clinical, training and research governance linking Universities, Hospital Groups and CHOs underpinned and determined by government policy and aligned to Sláintecare.
• Clinical academic posts with an explicit contractual remit for clinical service, research, and education to support a high-quality evidence-based learning health system, and also to provide leadership to develop and adopt new technological advances to address health challenges and deliver health gains.
• Infrastructure development to provide up to date and fit-for-purpose facilities to enable state-of-the-art education, training, and research for Interprofessional learning, collaboration, and teamwork.
• The development of a comprehensive electronic patient record, with associated data analytics capability and underpinned by a universal identification number (ID number).
• Appropriately designed and integrated Information Technology which will enable data sharing, machine learning, use of artificial intelligence and will support cross-functional learning and collaboration.

In November 2021, the Chief Academic Officers of the 7 Hospital Groups published an visionary document entitled 'Future of Irish Healthcare: Developing an Academic Health Science System to underpin Sláintecare’. This outlines an ambitious future for academic Irish healthcare in Ireland as an essential foundation to implement Sláintecare.