The Smart D8 District brings together local authorities, academia, healthcare, local community and industry in a partnership model to address real world issues.
The Digital Hub, Smart Dublin, Dublin City Council and St. James’s Hospital are joined by Tyndall National Institute, St Patrick’s Mental Health Services, Trinity Research & Innovation, Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, National College of Art & Design, Guinness Enterprise Centre and Health Innovation Hub Ireland and the HSE as partners in this unique initiative.
The programme applies a people-centric approach, with the engagement and active participation of the local community at its core.
In late 2020, the first Community Survey initiative was launched to capture the needs and priorities of the local community. The findings formed the foundation of the Smart D8 programme — initial themes identified in consultation with the community include mental health, the impact of Covid-19, population health, environment, and positive and healthy ageing.
In early 2021, the first call for pilot projects to focus on Covid-19 Impact, Mental Health and Population Health was made. Five successful projects were announced, from 37 applications:
- Civic Dollars — A community currency to encourage use of public parks and drive better health outcomes for the community, led by Dublin City Council and Moai Digital founder Stephen McPeake. The project uses a smartphone app to reward visitors with Civic Dollars for spending time in participating Dublin 8 parks, which can then be exchanged for goods and services from local businesses or gifted to local community organisations. Anonymised data also gives the council feedback needed to understand what communities want from the parks.
- Heart of our City — In partnership with the Irish Heart Foundation and Novartis, Heart of our City is a population health program that will focus on heart health in Dublin 8. This pilot project will connect people in Dublin 8 with a range of resources to support their cardiovascular health, building on existing social prescribing initiatives in the locality.
- Virtual Reality Meditation Platform — In partnership with SolasVR, this project will pilot a Virtual Reality Meditation platform in the community. SolasVR enables a micro-break to allow the users to create some time and space away from events or situations that are impacting them.
- Ways to Wellbeing: Learning from Locals — In partnership with St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services, Ways to Wellbeing is a project that will support students in learning about mental health and wellbeing through engaging with the lives of the older community in Dublin 8. The project is designed for students of both primary and secondary schools in the locality.
- Your Portal – a health educational initiative, aimed at enabling patients to increase access to their health data. Enabled by a partnership between Learnovate at Trinity College Dublin, and Saint Patricks Mental Health Services (SPMHS), Your Portal enabled patients to increase access to their health data. With service use of digital patient portals strong, but clinician engagement slow (but gaining momentum), this project aimed to generate insights into how digital patient portals could maintain patient engagement, and improve adoption in line with evidenced base research and best practice.
In early 2022, a second call for pilots was made from within the Smart D8 consortium and a further three pilot projects were chosen:
- ehealth exhibition (Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, the National College of Art and Design and Trinity College Dublin)
- Bee8 was an initiative between The Digital Hub, Tyndall National Institute, National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services (SPMHS) to develop a link between society, nature and wellbeing using bees and data. By integrating sensors into beehives, urban environment quality is measured as exemplified by the bee population’s health, facilitated by The Liberties Community Project (merger of RECDP: Robert Emmet Community Development Project and SICCDA: South Inner City Community Development Association). Through capturing local air quality and CO2 levels, sensors create a feedback loop between local residents and hive managers, as to the impact on Dublin 8’s biodiversity.
- Optimising Health Data by Trinity College Dublin, St. James’s Hospital, and the HSE, in key collaboration with The Liberties Community Project (TLCP) and residents association, helped a Dublin 8 resident community advocate for change. This project helped address a pre-existing issue of health challenges related to a local social housing complex, where aged housing units had developed notable mould and dampness. Despite voiced lived experiences by the residents, existing procurement couldn’t be made based on qualitative data alone. Through analysis of patient records, comparing residents who lived in the flats as well as those who lived outside of them in the same area, the pilot identified a strong link between those living in the flats and predisposition to respiratory illness. This provided governmental authorities the ability to make procurement decisions to secure regeneration funding to retrofit the flats. By connecting the university, local community and governmental authority together — it created better data to drive better decision-making; optimised data for community well-being, and collaboratively enabled evidence to be turned into action for healthier futures.
In March 2023, a further public call for pilots was launched. This call focused on three themes: Positive and Healthy Ageing, Connected Patient in the Community and Population Health. A record number of applications were received, and four new projects were selected:
- Menopause and the City from Dr Louise Fitzgerald of Grafton Medical Practice: this pilot is seeking to create a better educational ecosystem around menopause health for both individuals as well as families and friends. A project with truly scalable potential, Dr Louise Fitzgerald is aiming for Dublin 8 to become the centre of the first city-wide approach to positive menopause education and support.
- Brace from Conor Motyer: Brace is a community-based recovery app which seeks to assist patients who are undergoing physical rehabilitation. With an added focus on the mental wellness aspect of rehabilitation, Brace uses exercise tracking, gamification and community support to improve both recovery engagement and mental health outcomes arising from research that has found that rehab program completion rates can be as low as 50%.
- MoveAhead from Dr Jamie McGann and Dr Johann Issartel: MoveAhead is based on years of clinical experience from both founders, as well as practical research carried out with the GAA which has found that children’s movement skills are deteriorating in line with increased use of screens and technology. MoveAhead is the world’s first motion tracking and movement analytics platform built specifically for children, which informs games to assist with improving children’s movement skills.
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) Identifier from Dr Brian Kent/St James’s Hospital: OSA Identifier is seeking to reduce the wait time for a sleep apnea diagnosis, which is currently up to two years. OSA Identifier has developed an app to provide at-home data which can be reviewed by clinical specialists and both inform and speed up diagnosis and treatment options for sleep apnea.
In February 2024, Smart D8 launched its fourth call for innovative pilot project solutions in the themes of Community Health, Education and Environment — receiving a range of applications from across enterprise, academia, public sector and civil society (10% international). The 2024 Pilot Call resulted in five further pilot innovations and engaging entirely new citizen cohorts:
- Kids Speech Labs is an enterprise by Dr. Shona D’Arcy to understand children’s speech and language development needs. By engaging 21 schools and community organisations through Smart D8, results revealed 67% of families having concerns about their child’s development, and included a significant gender (82% male) and cultural disparity (39% of whom had a second-language). It market-validated a critical need for early-intervention screening; up to 50% of whom we learned are not represented on official waiting list counts by the HSE.
- Digital Medication Management System (DMMS) by Dublin Simon Community, implemented a cloud-based software at Usher’s Island medical facility to reduce health risks experienced in paper-based administration for a vulnerable homeless population; who often face barriers to accessing healthcare. The pilot engaged 70 citizens; training all available 37 on-site healthcare staff in the DigiCare platform, and 33 clients registered on the system — achieving service validation across all three clinical services.
- St James’s Hospital Portasana® Care Journeys, led by Lyndsey Watson and Sonia Neary of Wellola, deployed a personalised virtual care platform for citizens’ self-management of chronic disease when away from hospital. The pilot engaged 701 patients registered in the Diabetes department and successfully demonstrated improved Type 2 Diabetes self-management. It secured validation of benchmarks for scaling for other chronic diseases, including a 33% reduction in avoidable in-person hospital appointments.
- Access Information Map, led by CP-life Research Centre at RCSI, addressed a large-scale gap in disability services by creating a centralised web dashboard to reduce access barriers. Supported by a service and interaction design (IxD) curriculum collaboration at The National College of Art and Design (NCAD) with Smart D8, the pilot mapped, identified and engaged 265 services, 32 organisations, 15 service users, and nine service providers, supporting critical user validation to enable launch.
- Brain Health, led by the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), in collaboration with Outlandish Theatre (OT) Platform, created and implemented a dementia educational and awareness program through theatre workshops with Dublin 8 residents. The pilot engaged 44 clinicians, researchers, patients and carers across two theatre workshops at the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA) and The Coombe Hospital, validating the “Open Theatre Practice” cross-sectoral health model for scaled outreach.
In February 2025, Smart D8 launched its fifth call for innovative pilot project solutions in the themes of Connected Patient in the Community, Positive and Healthy Ageing, and Community. Inspired by blue zones, extensive applications were received from across enterprise, academia, public sector and civil society, resulting in three further innovative pilot collaborations for engaging Dublin 8:
- LISTEN (Leveraging an AI Scribe Tool to Detect Early Non-Specific Symptoms of Cancer) by the PRiCAN research group at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, tackled delays in cancer diagnosis caused by non-specific symptoms like fatigue or weight loss. It developed and deployed an AI-supported ‘Non-Specific Symptoms’ (NSS) template across four Centric Health GP practices and 554 consultations — prompting clinicians on potential early cancer indicators (such as appetite loss, fatigue, vague abdominal pain), helping ensure subtle symptoms are not overlooked.
- Smart Heart, led by PatientMpower in collaboration with St James’s Hospital Heart Support Unit, supported remote monitoring for people living with heart failure (affecting an estimated 2% of the Irish population and responsible for 5% of all emergency hospital admissions). Citizens used connected home devices to transmit key changes in biomarkers associated with heart failure progression, such as blood pressure and weight, to clinicians in real time — allowing citizens to stay at home safely while giving clinicians real-time insight into any important bioindicator changes for early intervention.
- D8 Astro Football, led by Football Cooperative, engaged men in positive health behaviours through weekly ‘pick-up’ football games to foster conversations around physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Championed by Dublin City Council, it engaged 161 participants across 43 nationalities, activated three sites in Dublin 8, and delivered 22 ‘pick-up’ games over 12 weeks. Supported by South East Technological University (SETU) and University College Dublin (UCD), the pilot captured real-time mood, stress and wellbeing data before and after games. 77% participants self-reporting improved physical health, 65% improved mental wellbeing, and 71% improved social connection and inclusion by pilot end — demonstrating its Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework for scale-up with partners such as the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and Local Sports Partnerships.
Get Involved
To learn more about Smart D8:
Email: info@smartd8.ie
Website: https://smartd8.ie/
Socials: LinkedIn, X
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