A Novel National Master’s in Digital Health Transformation: driving cohesive systemic digital change

To spearhead the digital transformation of the Irish Health system, a National Master’s in Digital Health Transformation was co-designed between the Irish Health Service (HSE) and the eight Irish research universities. The Master’s was designed around the new Stay Left, Shift Left-10X paradigm which advocates for shifts in focus from illness to wellness, hospital to home and a patient rather than clinician centred health system. A key feature of the Masters is that the main deliverable is a digital change project in the health service instead of the traditional 30,000-word dissertation. The Digital Change project, while an extremely valuable learning process also created a cohesive wave of digital change in an organization and ecosystem known for resistance to change. An additional innovation is the use of a patient jury to guide selection and to score projects. More than one hundred and fifty clinical students delivered over 85 completed projects which brought significant positive benefits across the quadruple aim lens. The education and change initiative achieved a massive return on investment, with some individual projects achieving return on investments significantly greater than the overall cost of the Master’s program. In parallel to the National Master’s program, other initiatives aligned with the national health strategy Slaintecare, such as the building of a network of primary care centres were carried out. Despite many remaining challenges, Ireland’s global health system ranking improved 74 places over the first five-year duration of the Masters. Acknowledging multifactorial reasons for improvement, we can still conclude that education led digital change is highly effective at introducing positive digital change in a complex adaptive systems environment.