Finalist

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of the Year Award

RCSI Student Innovation Challenge

Finalist of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of the Year Award

RCSI - Ireland (Republic)

"Empowering students to develop solutions to real life healthcare problems."


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Summary

Innovative translational health research can provide better patient outcomes and ultimately improve human health. Healthcare students are increasingly eager to apply their learning to address real-life challenges that impact the lives of patients. Keen to foster this entrepreneurial spirit and to ensure that we translate our research to provide better patient outcomes, RCSI launched the annual Student Innovation Challenge in 2017. The Student Innovation Challenge gives students the opportunity to develop their innovation and ideation skills, team work and pitching skills, and encourages them to have some fun along the way. It is a great opportunity for students to equip themselves with the skills needed to better understand the importance of innovation in addressing health and research problems as well as understanding the process of research commercialisation and knowledge transfer. Our graduates are employed worldwide across many different healthcare environments and this experience gives them a legacy of entrepreneurial knowledge and skillsets, and the confidence to continue innovating in their future careers.

The RCSI Student Innovation Challenge is unique in that the healthcare challenges presented to the students are devised by research active clinicians from our partner hospitals, who have an in-depth insight into the needs of patients and the healthcare system. Working in teams, the students are provided with mentorship from the challenge leaders and supported by training in key aspects of needs led innovation including market research, intellectual property and research commercialisation, to develop innovations that have the potential solve challenges in healthcare.

Key People


Dr Aoife Gallagher
Head of Innovation
Office of Research and Innovation,  RCSI



Dr Shona Pfeiffer
Deputy Director of the RCSI Reserach Summer School
RCSI Reserach Summer School,  RCSI



Dr Derek John
Technology Transfer Case Manager
Office of Research and Innovation,  RCSI



Dr Sarah O‘Neill
RCSI Research Summer School
RCSI Research Summer School,  RCSI


Acknowledgements

This initiative would not be possible without the support of the Challenge leaders who provide their time to devise challenges and mentor students each year. We also very much appreciate the contribution of guest speakers and judges.

Images

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

Every year the Student Innovation Challenge provides undergraduate medical, physiotherapy and pharmacy students with the opportunity to develop new skills and create solutions to real-world challenges which have the opportunity to impact the lives of patients. The impact on participants is clear with one participant commenting “It was a great way to get insight into a current problem that we didn’t know about. And a great chance for me to meet new people, we never knew we could do it until we finally did. There were lots of good ideas in the pitch night. It was a fun, insightful program and I was able to gain a lot of new knowledge.” The impact of the solutions can also be wide ranging. Last year’s winning Student team RED addressed a challenge set by Haematology Specialist Registrar Dr Helen Fogarty and designed an innovative, multipronged campaign to attract blood donors of minority ethnic background to help address the shortage of ethnically matched donors available for the treatment of sickle cell disease. This challenge is timely in light of recent shortages announced by the Irish Blood Transfusion Blood Service, requiring importation of O negative blood units from the UK for the first time since the 1990s. The findings of their research study have recently been accepted for publication in the journal ‘Blood Transfusion’, as well as for an oral presentation at the prestigious European Haematology Association conference.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

The participants of this programme, be they students, challenge leaders, judges or guest speakers all give generously of their time and thoroughly enjoy being involved.
Our challenge leaders really enjoy the opportunity to share their skills and knowledge with students and all agree that if they had had the opportunity to participate in a program like this when they were training that they would have jumped at it.

“I can’t recommend becoming a challenge leader highly enough. Patients can really benefit from enthusiastic students exploring innovative solutions to medical problems. It gives students an additional dimension when it comes to solving problems they may encounter in their future career” Susan Byrne Challenge leader 2019 and 2021 and Consultant Paediatric Neurologist.

For busy clinicians, finding time for such an initiative is a not insignificant time investment, but an experience they find overwhelmingly enjoyable and ultimately of benefit to their patients and field, evidenced by repeated involvement year on year. Fostering collaborative skill development and partnership between leading healthcare professionals and students working together on challenges with substantial outputs provides an enriching experience for all those involved.

The clinical leadership in setting these challenges first included in the 2018 SIC is key to getting the students engaged, it makes the challenges relevant and tangible to healthcare students – rather than challenges set by lab based researchers. Patient centric solution are key to success and the clinician leaders have been able to facilitate patient access and a real clinical experience for the teams.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

We plan to grow the Student Innovation Challenge year on year and continue to respond to student feedback to improve their learning experience. Moving forward, we aim to provide a structured support and mentorship package to the winning team and their Challenge Leader to facilitate the development and realisation of their innovation and see its translation into the real-world healthcare setting with tangible impacts for patients, their healthcare providers and the field. Support will be provided through the RCSI Office of Research and Innovation and the RCSI Research Summer School with contributions from industry experts.

We will also share programme learnings with other RCSI campuses (Bahrain/Malaysia) and with other Irish Universities and expand collaborative work with other initiatives such as the Health Innovation Hub spark ignite programme and the EI undergraduate entrepreneur awards.


KEY STATISTICS

6

Number of challenges/year

6

Number of years running

Up to 120

Number of student participants per year

100%

% of students who said the programme improved their problem solving and team work skills

92%

% of students who enjoyed the programme

1

Successful grant funded project

2

Peer reviewed publications

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