Shaping the Institute for Child Health: Vision, Strategic Direction and Trajectories 2026 to 2030

Ireland already has world-class universities, children's hospitals, research centres and charities. What it has lacked is the connective tissue that joins them. Discovery happens in universities. Care is delivered in hospitals and communities. Innovation emerges from clinical need. Education develops the future workforce. Simulation makes change safe to put into practice. Too often these operate in parallel rather than as one system.

The purpose of the Institute for Child Health Ireland is to be the integrator across these domains. ICHI has not been created to add another research institute, education centre, innovation hub or simulation service. Its purpose is to bring existing strengths together into a single connected ecosystem focused on improving child health outcomes, linking researchers, innovators, educators, simulation specialists, clinicians, policymakers, children, families and communities in a way that no single organisation can achieve alone.

Impact is our heart and our direction. Children and families define what impact means, and they are our first partners in creating it. Every study, dataset and collaboration is held to a single test, whether it changes the trajectory of a child's life.

Our work is organised around four connected domains of impact.

These engines are at different stages. Research is the most established. The others are building quickly within one integrated plan. Education and academic advancement is integrating 180 Ireland-wide training programmes for the transition to the new National Children's Hospital and developing digital and precision education. ICHI Sim has readied teams for the move to the new hospital and now runs an active 2026 programme across its three areas. Innovation has built a pipeline to support clinical teams and established Europe-wide partnerships to accelerate child health innovation. As their strategies are set over the coming year, each engine will map explicitly to the four impact domains.

By 2030, Ireland will be recognised as one of the most connected and collaborative child health ecosystems in Europe. Children and families will have faster access to evidence-informed care, more opportunity to take part in research and innovation and services increasingly designed and evaluated with those who use them.

We will have built a nationally connected child health infrastructure that bridges universities, healthcare providers, researchers, educators, innovators and simulation specialists across every region of the island. In that environment, discoveries move more quickly into practice, innovation is co-designed with children, families and professionals, education and workforce development are aligned to future need, simulation is used routinely to improve safety and quality, data is used ethically and securely to improve outcomes and Ireland attracts and retains world-class child health talent.

Through this, ICHI will contribute to better health outcomes, greater research and innovation capacity, stronger workforce development and a more sustainable and learning-oriented health system.

Impact is the measure of everything we do. Our work turns discovery into tangible benefit for children and families in Ireland and beyond. We hold ourselves to four domains of impact, each setting out the change we work to create and the strength we bring to it.

ICHI Sim works across three areas: education and training (Sim Ed), teams and systems improvement (Culture and Translational Simulation) and capacity building (Faculty Development). The figures below separate completed work from what is planned or estimated for the rest of 2026.

The value of this work reaches well beyond childhood. International evidence is clear that health and development in the earliest years shape lifelong health, education, productivity and wellbeing. Investment in prevention, early intervention and effective treatment in childhood lowers future healthcare use, improves participation in education and employment and strengthens society. Through its integrator role, ICHI increases the return on Ireland's existing investment in child health by connecting effort across the system and reducing duplication. Together this work improves the health of children today, strengthens the system that cares for them, develops the workforce they depend on and delivers lasting benefit to society.

ICHI grew from decades of partnership. The Research and Innovation Office was established in 2019 and expanded through a mix of core CHI investment and external funding from university partners, industry, the Health Research Board and EU sources. The translational National Children's Research Centre was integrated into CHI in 2024. The academic partnership of CHI and the four Dublin universities was formalised in a Memorandum of Agreement, which established the Paediatric Academic Health Sciences Centre as the academic engine. In 2025 its Board charged the Centre with establishing an all-island Institute for Child Health Ireland and with building the Institute's physical home on the shared St James's campus, the Children’s Research and Innovation Centre (CRIC).

The Institute is overseen by the PAHSC Board, an administrative alliance of Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Dublin City University with CHI. It is led by the Chief Academic Officer. ICHI is organised as a CHI academic directorate with three departments: Research Partnerships and Impact, which carries research, innovation, clinical trials and impact including the CRADLE trusted research environment; Education and Academic Development; and Simulation, which serves culture / teams and systems improvement, education and training, and faculty development. An Executive Director is responsible for governance, advocacy and financial stewardship. In this way the four engines are delivered through three departments, with research and innovation brought together under one directorate. High standards of operational excellence, peer review and transparency are embedded across all our work.

As Children's Health Ireland integrates into the HSE, ICHI's direction is set alongside the HSE Strategic Framework for Health and Social Care Research. Alignment is therefore structural rather than optional, and ICHI maps to all five pillars and three enablers of that framework. Built on the clinical-academic partnership that is its foundation, ICHI is the paediatric clinical-academic engine for the HSE's research ambition. Our strongest alignment is on impact; on the data and infrastructure a research-enabled system needs and on workforce development. We are equally clear about the areas we are still building, above all a sustainable funding base for our registries and data environment.

ICHI already aligns across the HSE research framework. To move the areas, we are still building onto the same footing, and to sustain those that are already strong, a small number of things need to be in place.

The most important is a sustainable core funding base for our registries, our data environment and CRADLE, so that national infrastructure is not carried on temporary or philanthropic income alone. Alongside this we need protected time and joint clinical-academic posts to grow the research workforce, continued investment in the Centre for Research and Innovation as the Institute's physical home and a durable partnership with the HSE as Children's Health Ireland integrates into it.

With these in place, ICHI will publish a full impact framework with measurable targets across the four domains, formalise how we involve patients and families, and deliver lasting benefit for every child and family in Ireland.

"Tionchar: ár gcroí agus ár dtreo

Impact: our heart and our direction"