Professor Tom Fahey and Professor Susan Smith are among four principal investigators to receive investment to train and support health-related researchers under the Collaborative Doctoral Awards programme.

The research undertaken at RCSI will be in the areas of elderly care, and multimorbidity in primary care settings.

Commenting on the awards, Dr Mairead O'Driscoll, Interim Chief Executive at the Health Research Board said: “These awards are an important part of developing future leaders to undertake high quality health research in our health care system. The training programmes will equip health researchers with an extensive skill set that will allow them to go on and integrate research with patient care in their specialist clinical areas.”

Professor Janusz Jankowski, Deputy Vice Chancellor, RCSI, welcomed the news saying: “The awarding of this HRB funding demonstrates the great impact RCSI researchers are having in supporting patient-focused healthcare. I am delighted that Professor Tom Fahey’s work supporting appropriate care for the elderly and Professor Susan Smith’s research on targeted interventions for multimorbidity patients are being recognised at a national level by the Health Research Board. These projects have the potential to enhance the lives of patients globally.”

Professor Tom Fahey is the principal investigator of 'Right Care', a programme of research to enhance safe and appropriate care for older patients in Ireland.  With the HRB funding, this research programme will examine how right care can be given at the right time and in the right setting, so that older people get the greatest benefit and the lowest harm from health interventions. It will train four PhD doctoral candidates; a statistician, a general practitioner, a physiotherapist, and a pharmacist with four linked doctoral projects.

Professor Susan Smith will be the principal investigator of 'Managing complex multimorbidity in primary care: a multidisciplinary doctoral training programme'. This will train four PhD candidates with a focus on primary care delivery for patients who have complex multimorbidity, which means that they have multiple long term conditions and are often on ten or more regular medicines. The programme brings together a consortium of international, experienced senior researchers and PhD educators from a range of disciplines and settings.

Find out more about the four new programmes on the Health Research Board website. 

RCSI is ranked among the top 250 (top 2%) of universities worldwide in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2018) and its research is ranked first in Ireland for citations. It is an international not-for-profit health sciences institution, with its headquarters in Dublin, focused on education and research to drive improvements in human health worldwide. RCSI is a signatory of the Athena SWAN Charter