Tallaght University Hospital (TUH) scooped the 2026 Best Digital Health Innovation Award at the HSE Spark Summit earlier this week for its SmartCP app. Provided in partnership with myPatientSpace, the app supports patients with chronic pancreatitis through remote monitoring, tailored educational resources, and direct communication with their hospital care team. The app enables patients to remotely report red flags like worsening malabsorptive symptoms and signs of new diabetes so that appropriate interventions can be applied early to achieve better outcomes.
The award for Best Population Health Innovation went to the HSE’s Balancing Stress digital project. Balancing Stress offers six 30-minute self-directed online video sessions, which provide practical advice on managing stress, worry, anxiety, low mood and depression. Delivered by Dr Niamh Clarke, HSE Principal Psychologist, the programme also features expert interviews with Professor Alan Carr, Clinical Psychology at University College Dublin (UCD).
The initiative was launched in May 2025. To date, 129,000 people have accessed the programme, and 45,000 people use the resource regularly. User engagement levels have reached 60 per cent.
The Best Patient Education award went to St James’s Hospital for its Operation Preparation digital resource, which aims to educate patients on upcoming surgery. The series covers a variety of perioperative topics, such as anaesthetic preparation, what to expect from your appointment, explaining the different types of anaesthetic, why patients may need to fast and how to improve your health ahead of surgery.
The project is the first of its kind in the Northern hemisphere in that it has been created by healthcare professionals for patients. The initiative has proved popular at home and abroad, with more than 5,000 international downloads.
Speaking at the Summit, Mr Derek Tierney, the new Secretary General at the Department of Health, said the HSE Spark Innovation Programme, which is now in its ninth year, shows that “the most effective innovation for patient led and frontline service driven. It begins with the experience of patients and service users navigating the system and the insights of staff delivering care every day. Because those closest to the system truly understand what changes need the most.”
“Innovation in our health services is no longer on the fringes or on the margins. It has become central to how we operate. The question is not whether innovation exists because we can clearly see That it does. The real question is, how do we turn that innovation into consistent impact across the system.
“If we want those solutions to succeed beyond the pilot stage, we need to be very deliberate in how we design them. That means placing co-design at the centre of our approach. And it means involving all the key stakeholders from the outset. Patients and service users, clinicians and frontline teams, managers and system leaders. Because innovation works best when it is designed with people and not for them. That is what a human-centred design approach gives us – Solutions that are grounded in real need, shaped by real world experience, and capable of being implemented in practice.”
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