The HSE has launched a new financial award of €10,000 aimed at driving innovation in the management of outpatient services.

The new educational development fund was announced by HSE CEO Bernard Gloster at the HSE Spark Summit national innovation conference last week.

“We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” Mr Gloster said. “We will make that educational development fund available to the team that presents the most likely option.

“There’s only one challenge: you are not allowed to come with an initiative [that requires] new resources. You’re only allowed to come with an initiative that reworks the resources that we have because that’s where I need to start to see that level of significant innovation.”

The funding will be available to HSE staff, although the team may include private vendors or other partners.

The latest data from the HSE, published last month, shows that there are almost 600,000 people awaiting an outpatient appointment, including 510,233 adults and 83,155 children. More than 40 per cent of patients have been waiting at least six months. Almost 10 per cent have been waiting longer than 18 months, including 7359 children.

Orthopaedics continues to be the specialty with the largest waiting list. At the end of May 2024, more than 65,000 people were awaiting an orthopaedic outpatient appointment. Almost 11,000 have been waiting for more than a year.

Dermatology and cardiology are close behind with 53,067 and 40,574, respectively, waiting for an outpatient appointment at the end of last month.

Mr Gloster cautioned healthcare innovators to consider how projects can be scaled up at the outset. The winning project will be selected by the six HSE regional executive officers.

“We are not short in this country of innovation,” he said. “We are not short of talent. We are not short of insight. But when we innovate, scaling and consistency become a problem.

“When we fail to scale innovation, we fail to serve our citizens. We fail to do what we are paid to do.”