Gary Culliton reports on HIQA’s Health Technology Assessment Directorate, which is charged with establising the cost-effectiveness of new public initiatives. A Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is about more than deciding whether a programme is cost-effective. HIQA’s cervical cancer HTA recently concluded that vaccinating all 12-year-old girls against HPV, would cost about €12m per year. The [...]
Vhi boss confident of seeing off competitors
July 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Sandra Ryan speaks to Mr Jimmy Tolan, Chief Executive of Vhi Healthcare, about the changes taking place in the health insurance market. New Vhi Healthcare Chief Executive Jimmy Tolan, who throughout our interview is admirably pleasant and talkative, doesn’t change his tone (or mince his words) when criticising the competition. In fact, it almost appears [...]
Pharmacists face negative equity
June 10, 2008 By 1 Comment
Gary Culliton speaks to Mr Jim Canavan, UniPhar CEO, about how pharmacies have reduced in value over the last 18 months . Pharmacies may have reduced in value by one third over the last 18 months and young pharmacists who bought businesses within the last two years may be looking at negative equity, because of [...]
Community services to grow
June 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Greg Baxter spoke to Mr Jim Joyce, CEO of Point of Care, a company whose specialist infusion clinics spare patients from making trips to hospital. The opening of the second Point of Care clinic – a specialist nursing infusion centre in west Dublin marks the beginning of what is expected to be a rapid national [...]
Ireland must fight for devices industry
June 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Greg Baxter spoke to Dr John O’Dwyer about how competition from other countries may threaten Ireland’s medical devices industry. Ireland could lose irrevocable ground to Poland and the Czech Republic if it does not reduce bureaucracy in clinical trials for medical devices, Irish Medical Times has been told. Dr John O’Dwyer, Medical Director, Medical Devices [...]
‘Hollywood ending’ for radiotherapy plan?
May 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Greg Baxter heard good news about the progress of the national radiotherapy plan, when he spoke with Prof Donal Hollywood at the sixth International Cancer Conference. The chairman of one of the most important strategy documents in the history of Irish healthcare stood before a mostly empty room in Dublin Castle last week (it was [...]
Challenging medical education
April 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Greg Baxter spoke to Prof Geraldine MacCarrick, about the introduction of outcomes-based medical education. The principles of medical education that dominated the 20th century, proposed in 1910 by Abraham Flexner, stated that future doctors ought to spend years listening to lectures, working in labs and memorising textbooks before immersion in a clinical setting largely divorced [...]
Shooting from the hip
April 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Gary Culliton talks about the problems of Ireland’s HSE with the Irish-born troubleshooter and presenter of BBC’s ‘Can Gerry Robinson fix the NHS?’ It doesn’t matter what you pay a Chief Executive, if you get an organisation that works,” according to Irish-born troubleshooter businessman, Sir Gerry Robinson, the ex-Chairman/Chief Executive of Granada and Sky TV. [...]
Major reform needed to curb drinking
April 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment
The Government may have to make decisions, in the fight against alcohol abuse, which will result in a loss of money for the exchequer, a prominent consultant psychiatrist has warned. Dr Siobhán Barry, who appeared last week before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, spoke to Irish Medical [...]
GP contract — IMO fights for its rights
March 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Ian McGuinness spoke to incoming IMO President Dr Martin Daly about his dissatisfaction with the ongoing problems regarding the GP contract. The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) will use legal means, if necessary, to assert its right to represent general practitioners, the outgoing Chairman of the union’s GP Committee has announced. Dr Martin Daly, who is [...]