Goal 4
Invest in innovative research ideas
Funding the best research, ideas and innovations
As the lead health research funder in Ireland, the HRB supports the best research, ideas and innovations to improve health and social care, and to strengthen the healthcare system. With a focus on excellence and relevance, we will fund a combination of ‘bottom-up’ and themed calls that increase the number of novel breakthroughs with potential to have a meaningful impact on people’s health outcomes. We are committed to the co-creation of research with people, patients, carers and communities who have lived experience.
We will support innovative, investigator-led research by:
- Funding the best ideas and innovations proposed by researchers, including methodological innovations, in order to unlock novel ideas and pursue novel findings or solutions that themed calls can miss
- Implementing initiatives to promote and leverage the use of secondary data, AI and big data analytics to enhance research and innovation in health and social care
- Exploring initiatives that advance world-leading genomics research that is integrated with clinical genomics services and accelerates diagnosis and improves patient outcomes
- Embracing collaborations with national and international funders that enable larger and more ambitious projects and/or bridge gaps across funders and the research continuum from discovery to practice (and back again).
We will support health research in themed areas focused on delivering policy/service impact by:
Expanding our investments with other partners, including the Department of Health, HSE and health research charities to advance excellent and innovative research directed towards national and global priorities
Working with government departments and agencies across government to ensure a joined-up and scaled responsive ‘One Health’ approach to research and evidence
Working with researchers, policy-makers, charities, community groups and the public to support research that addresses the wider determinants of health and advances equity and inclusion
Supporting collaborative research networks to coalesce around important problems to exchange information, advance research, and accelerate findings into policy and practice settings.
We will involve the public, patients, carers, and communities across all of our funded activities by:
Embedding PPI as a core requirement across all of our programmes
Continuing to play a leadership role in advancing innovative PPI activity and the infrastructure that makes it meaningful and impactful
Strengthening our partnerships with people with lived experience, carers, patient and community groups, and seldom-heard groups, in order to ensure that their voices are heard throughout the entire research life cycle from co-production to adoption and uptake
Including PPI contributors on review panels and governance groups
Supporting inclusive methods and providing funding to researchers to promote and disseminate their research in plain language summaries
Evaluating and publishing the impact of our PPI activities.