Funding Awarded

Pathways to Improving Transition to Adult Services & Enhancing Self-Management in Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: A New Era of Treatments

The teenage years are a time of change. Being an adolescent with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) can bring additional challenges due to complex and demanding treatments. A key task for teenagers with CF is to learn the skills to manage their health, as they prepare to transition into adult-based care. In Ireland, many adolescents transition to...

The Next Generation' Diabetes Self-Management Alliance Conference

The Diabetes-Self-Management Alliance (DSMA) conference aims to share the most up-to date research evidence on how best to support people with diabetes to manage their condition on a day to day basis and to explore ways to improve diabetes self-management education and support in the future in partnership with people living with...

Irish Clinical Academic Training: An All-Ireland Integrated Training Programme for Clinical Academics

The Irish Clinical Academic Training Programme (ICAT-1) was established with the vision of changing the training landscape for clinician scientists on the island of Ireland. The proposed ICAT-2 will advance the achievements of ICAT-1 and is the next step in developing clinical academics of the future across the spectrums of...

HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2021 - 2026

No summary available

HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway

No summary available

Emerge-2: placebo-controlled RCT of the Effectiveness of MEtformin in addition to usual care in the Reduction of Gestational diabetes mellitus Effects

Diabetes (high blood sugars) developing during pregnancy is called Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM). GDM is increasing, affecting one-in-eight pregnant women in Ireland. Women with GDM have an increased risk of complications including delivery by Caesarean section and more blood pressure problems. Women with GDM have a 7-fold...

Maximising medication adherence and minimising physician interia: Lowering to target the blood pressure of older patients with hypertension-A cluster randomised feasibility study in general practice

High blood pressure can lead to strokes and heart disease. Despite treatment, many patients continue to have uncontrolled blood pressure. In Ireland, we do very badly in this area - the worst of sixteen high income countries worldwide. For example, the proportion of Irish male patients with controlled blood pressure is 17% - in Canada,...

Blood-based biomarkers for early detection of preclinical neurocognitive disorders

With more people now living longer lives, dementia is becoming an increasingly important problem in society. One of the biggest challenges in designing studies of potential new treatments for dementia, is accurately predicting which people are most likely to develop dementia in the future, prior to them showing signs of the disease....

Using knowledge translation to enhance the use of evidence in public health decision-making by policymakers and healthcare managers in Ireland

Health policy refers to decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society. Using high-quality evidence to inform how health policies are made is crucial to ensure safe and effective healthcare and to optimise patient and public health outcomes. Despite this, international research...

Development of a rapid, highly sensitive, handheld Raman-based device for detection of SARS-CoV-2 and serological responses against SARS-CoV-2

Serological assays to detect antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 are critical to study immune responses to the virus, determine precise rates of infection, track progression of infections, and identify immune individuals in order to limit exposure of susceptible groups or as potential sources of convalescent serum therapeutics. The...

Treating Primary aldosteronism-induced hypertension via microwave thermal therapy

In this tripartite US-Ireland R&D partnership program R01 research plan, we propose the development, optimization, and evaluation of a minimally-invasive microwave thermal therapy (MWT) system for definitive treatment of primary aldosteronism. Primary aldosteronism (PA) accounts for 5 - 12% of all hypertension and confers a higher...

Improving psychosocial supports for youth mental health

This research program will focus on improving the mental health of young people with serious mental health disorders. Serious mental health disorders (including schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders) are ranked among the top causes of years lived with disability.

My research will build on what is currently known about...

Collaboration to reduce antimicrobial use and resistance and identify opportunities for improvement and awareness

Infections are often treated with antibiotics, even though antibiotics are not always the best option. Only infections that are caused by bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, infections caused by viruses do not respond to antibiotic treatment. An additional problem is that bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to...

Collaborative Doctoral Programme in Chronic Disease Prevention (CDP-CDP)

According to the WHO, chronic disease prevention is one of the major health challenges of the 21st century. Prevention programmes are urgently needed to reduce burden on patients and health services.

In Ireland, there is a national deficit in skills, leadership and capacity in the development, implementation and evaluation of...

Diabetic Foot Disease: from PRevention to treatment to IMproved patient Outcomes (DFD PRIMO)

Diabetic foot disease (DFD), is associated with devastating outcomes including foot ulceration, sepsis, amputation and premature death. The risk of premature death in people with DFD is reportedly nine fold the risk of amputation. Early interventions to prevent the first ulcer are a key priority of national and international clinical...

Implementation of Making Every Contact Count (MECC): developing a collaborative strategy to optimise and scale-up MECC.

Importance of the study:
Many chronic illnesses can be prevented if people adopt healthier behaviours. The Making Every Contact Count (MECC) programme, developed by the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE), aims to train all healthcare professionals to support patients to make healthier lifestyle choices during...

Using guanine to re-sensitise MRSA to methicillin: Is purine nucleotide homeostasis the Achilles' heel of MRSA antibiotic resistance?

The threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections to hospital patients and the wider society continues to escalate. The discovery of antibiotics in the 1940's and 1950's represented one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in history. However since then the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has gradually erooded...

Membrane Seeping for induction of labour: The Milo Study

Post-term pregnancy refers to a pregnancy that continues past 42 weeks’ gestation. It occurs in approximately 10% of pregnancies and is the most common reason for induction of labour. Post-term pregnancy is associated with higher risk of trauma to mother and baby.

Membrane sweeping is a simple procedure potentially promoting the...

A Cognitive Occupation-Based programme for people with Multiple Sclerosis- a cluster randomised pilot trial to improve cognition and daily functioning for people with multiple sclerosis

The aim of this research is to test the feasibility of running a large-scale trial of an occupational therapy intervention called a Cognitive Occupation-Based programme for people with Multiple Sclerosis. The study will focus on how acceptable the intervention is and how well the trial runs. Sixteen occupational therapists will run the...

Feasibility and preliminary efficacy study of an online pain management programme for children undergoing major orthopedic surgery: iCanCope Post-Op Surgery

After major surgery,  one in four children experience chronic post-surgical pain (i.e., pain that lasts longer than 3 months). Children and adolescents report that chronic pain makes them feel insecure, affects school attendance and affacts their relationships with friends and family. It is important that children and adolescents...

Citizen Science: The People's Trial

Randomised trials are instrumental in providing reliable and robust evidence on the benefits, harms and costs of health care, so that people can make informed choices. However, the general public?s understanding of randomised trials can be limited and ensuring public support for and participation in trials remains challenging. The...

Piloting the Community Engaged Scholars Program in Ireland

Public and patient involvement in health research is not embedded in Irish Universities. As part of the PPI Ignite Awards scheme the HRB have funded 5 Irish Universities to demonstrate the value of PPI and champion this approach in Ireland. PPI involves public/patients working in partnership with researchers in setting research...

Disseminating, Engaging, and Sharing Knowledge (DESK):patient informed resource for understanding our research

Based on the findings of the research conducted during our HRB Research Leader's Award, the aim of the proposed KEDS project is to effectively disseminate the finding of our research to chronic pain patients and the general public. Sharing research findings with the general public is very important but can be difficult to get right; we...

The patient is part of the answer - don't leave us out in the cold!

This application aims to produce a documentary that explains public and patient involvement in health research to the general public and encourages more people to become involved with researchers. Known as PPI, public and patient involvement means that people who are likely to be affected by research results are directly involved in...

"Let's Talk About" Series

Researchers in dementia at NUI Galway are producing important research insights into many aspects of dementia care in Ireland, specifically: resource allocation decision-making; support structures for family carers; and how people with dementia are treated within the care system. The focus is now turning to sharing the results...

Using visual media to communicate complex information

Services in Ireland for people with dementia are poorly developed. The main partnership award aims to (i) describe current dementia services across all sectors and (ii) ask people with dementia, carers, health workers and managers about the ideal level and type of service provision for people with dementia who have different needs and...

Evidence Synthesis Ireland

Health care decisions should be based on the combination of the full amount of information that is available rather than relying on the convenient selection of one or more individual pieces of information, or studies. Evidence synthesis methods seek to establish the overall balance of information on a given topic, and are based on...

Unlocking the potential of healthcare complaints to improve hospital care (UP-CIC)

Most assessments of quality of care in Irish healthcare services are focused on healthcare workers’ opinions, statistics (e.g., how many patients got infections), or investigating large errors. However, these assessments fail to consider patients’ unique insights into quality of care and support improvement in services. For example,...

Doctoral program in youth mental health leadership (The YouLead Program)

This doctoral training program focuses on youth mental health research. Mental health difficulties (including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia) account for approximately half of all causes of disability in individuals under the age of 35. Despite the fact that access to treatment is strongly associated with reduced risk...

Interact for Health: Increasing integrated knowledge translation capacity for impact

Although the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG) has engaged with the HSE Health and Wellbeing (H&W) Division as health partners on a number of activities to date, we believe there is significant potential for enhanced knowledge exchange between these two groups. Additionally, integrated Knowledge Translation (iKT)...

The biology of mood: What brain imaging and genetic studies tell us about Bipolar Disorder

This project aims to translate the known biology of bipolar disorder, enhance the accessibility of the latest discoveries and interpret the meaning and relevance to individuals with bipolar disorder, their families, carers and health professionals that are not research active. To complement the current emphasis on clinical aspects of...

Learning about trials - for children, by children

This project will consist of the development of new resources for teaching primary school children (aged 10-12) about why we need trials and how trials work, with a view to being more widely used throughout the trial community. These resources will align with the START (Schools Teaching Awareness of Randomised Trials) Competition,...

Development of an online cancer genetics educational resource for undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare learners

Genetic testing is becoming cheaper and easier to perform. As such, it is being performed more and more frequently; to help explain why people have developed cancer, or to try to identify genetic changes in their tumours to which novel drugs can be targeted. Genetic testing may also help identify individuals at risk of cancer,...

Let's talk - and act - about adherence in multimorbidity - a teaching and learning resource for general practice

More than half of those over the age of 65 live with more than one chronic condition. This is known as multimorbidity (MM). The prevalence of MM increases with age and is more common in less well off patients. Using muliple medications i.e. polypharmacy, is the norm in MM and many do not take their medications as prescribed i.e....

HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2017 -2021

No summary available

HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2017 - 2021 - Pilot: Education and training for recruiters to randomised trials

No summary available

HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway 2018-2021

No summary available

Development of a nebulised cell based therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome

Acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) constitute a spectrum of severe acute respiratory failure. Mortality rates over 60% have been reported and ARDS is the leading cause of death in the critically ill. ARDS develops most commonly in the context of severe sepsis, particularly infection with gram-negative...

PPI Ignite Award - National University of Ireland Galway

The Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Ignite Awards aim to promote PPI in health research in Ireland. Our NUI Galway Primary Care PPI group of patients and members of the public were asked to describe what a successful PPI Ignite project would look like (Figure 3). They responded by saying that success would be creating an...

Lending an ear: "iPeer2Peer" plus "Teens Taking Charge" online self-management to empower children with arthritis

Childhood arthritis is common and makes everyday activities diffciult for young people. It is a chronic illness that can cause children to experience pain, fatigue and emotional upset. This makes it more difficult for children to see friends and do enjoyable activities.

When children become teenagers they start making more...

Improving outcomes for young adults with type 1 diabetes in Ireland: the D1 now feasibility and cluster randomised pilot study

Many young adults with type 1 diabetes find it hard to control their blood glucose levels. With many changes going on in their lives their diabetes is often not a priority. They also find it hard to engage with hospital diabetes services because of an inflexible clinic appointment system and seeing a different member of staff at each...

Out of hospital cardiac arrest and community first response: International best practice, national consultation and prospective evaluation

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly ceases to pump blood around the body. The term 'Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest' (OHCA) is used to describe incidents where cardiac arrest occurs unexpectedly and is responded to by statutory emergency medical services (EMS). OHCA causes approximately 1,900 unexpected deaths in Ireland every...

Community Risk-based monitoring for Atrial Fibrillation Trial (CRAFT)

Atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart-beat, is common, affecting ~7% of people over 65 years of age. It is a major cause of stroke, increasing the risk of stroke 5-fold, and about one-third of patients with acute stroke have atrial fibrillation. Once detected, there are very effective treatments to prevent stroke - oral anticoagulant...

Resource allocation, priority-setting and consensus in dementia care in Ireland

A key action under the National Dementia Strategy (2014) is the delivery of appropriate supports and services for people with dementia that can be accessed in people's own homes and local communities. There is also an emphasis in the Strategy to address the individual needs of people with dementia and their carers in a manner that is...