29 Irish projects awarded €12.9m for healthcare research

This year’s projects vary widely, from wound-healing hyaluronic acid hydrogels to forecasting the health risks from vaping using machine learning.

29 projects from six universities across Ireland have been awarded a combined total of €12.9m in funding from the Irish Health Research Board (HRB) to address challenges in the healthcare industry.

The investigator-led projects (ILP) scheme provides support for research that, over time, aim to help address major health challenges in society. The scheme provides funding for projects across three broad categories; patient-oriented research, population health research and health services research.

The latest round of funding brings the total number of grants awarded under this scheme in the last five years to 56, with a combined value of €20.6m.

This year, researchers at Maynooth University received one award worth more than €400,000 for a project looking into boosting immune function in patients with obesity using iron.

“This award will allow us to continue to increase our understanding of this complex disease and investigate novel interventions to help improve outcomes for our patients,” said Maynooth University’s Dr Andrew Hogan, who is leading the project.

The Royal College for Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) received eight awards worth a total of €3.4m for projects investigating a wide range of topics from wound-healing hyaluronic acid hydrogel to predicting the health risks of vaping using machine learning.

Trinity College Dublin (TCD) won 11 awards totalling €4.7m for projects researching topics such as tuberculosis treatments and brain injuries in hip fracture patients. One TCD project that received an award is the Personalised Exercise Rehabilitation in Cancer Survivorship (PERCS) 2.0 project, which is investigating the real-world application – both physical and psychosocial – of exercise and exercise tools specific to Ireland in rehabilitating cancer survivors.

“Exercise is a critical intervention for supporting patients during and after cancer treatment,” said Dr Emer Guinan, who leads the PERCS project. “With 200,000 people living with and beyond cancer in Ireland, it is important to connect patients to the right level of exercise or rehabilitation service to meet their individual needs.”

University of Galway won two awards worth a total of more than €820,000 for research aiming to improve patient safety in healthcare delivery and the health impacts of dietary potassium.

Other grantees include the University of Limerick, which received two awards worth a total of more than €850,000 for projects looking into areas such as the effectiveness of geriatric assessments., while University College Dublin received five awards worth €2.1m for research into topics such as the use of precision medicine to improve acquired brain injury outcomes.

“We want to create new internationally relevant knowledge that will help to address major health challenges in society. And we want to make a positive impact on tomorrow’s healthcare,” said Dr Mairead O’Driscoll, CEO of HRB.

The projects are selected by an international panel of experts and each project will be funded for a maximum of four years. The next round for funding will open in August 2025.

Last year, 33 researchers were awarded a total of €10m under the same grant scheme to look at various topics including the use of psychedelics to treat depression, the role of platelets in sepsis and precision medicine for brain tumour patients, among many others.

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