2022 Categories
Entries are now open for the 2022 Irish Healthcare Awards!
To begin, select Enter Now below and you will be able to add more categories to your basket in the next step. Don't forget to save your entries as you go along.
Click here to view the entry guidelines.
An Duais Mhór is a unique category that cannot be entered, as the winner is chosen by the judges as the overall outstanding person, project or organisation chosen from all of the category winners.
If you are a registered charity, you may qualify for a reduction to your entry costs.
Please email ruth.davis@emap.com with your charity's name and registration number.
Once we have verified your charity registration number, we will send you a promotional code that can be used when completing your payment. This will reduce your cost per entry from €249 + VAT to €99 + VAT.
Best Use of Information Technology
This award is for the innovative use of information technology in a healthcare context to improve efficiencies and deliver better patient care. It includes systems that produce savings both in terms of personnel, revenue or patient time.
Community Healthcare Worker of the Year
NEW TO 2022
This award seeks to recognise a Healthcare worker who has made an outstanding contribution to patient care in their sphere. It is open to all qualified Healthcare workers practicing in Ireland. We invite applications from both Healthcare workers themselves and nominations from colleagues.
Free entry
Educational Meeting of the Year (webinar)
This award is for the best webinar/meeting of the year. This year while medical meetings in person have been impossible, the standard in production and presentation of webinars has increased across the healthcare arena. This award is for the company, person or institution that has produced the best/most educational meeting of 2022.
Equality Initiative of the Year
This award recognises those companies, individuals, institutions and organisations that have strived to create a more equal world by encouraging those who would not traditionally have had easy access or entry into a discipline to participate fully in it. It also may recognise initiatives that have allowed patients to live a more equal and successful life by creating circumstances allowing them to full participate in life.
Excellence in Healthcare Management
This award is to recognise excellence in healthcare management – particularly where it shows a demonstrable patient benefit. This award covers the entire spectrum of healthcare in Ireland – from hospitals to general practice to healthcare institutions or all kinds. This year it will focus on Covid-19 management – both of the disease itself, and the management of other illnesses during the pandemic. The judges are looking for excellence in strategy, conception and execution.

Healthiest Company of the Year
NEW TO 2022
This award is for the company that takes the best care of its staff’s health, mental and physical wellbeing. It is a company that is actively involved in promoting health, has programs that ensure its own staff are healthy – mentally and physically, and has a CSR program to help others in Ireland and abroad.
Hospital Manager of the Year
This award seeks to recognise a Hospital Manager who has made an outstanding contribution to their institution’s performance in the previous year. We invite detailed applications from hospital managers themselves or nominations from their management colleagues/medical staff.
Free entry
Hospital Project of the Year
For projects aimed at, or created/developed by, hospital doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other hospital-based healthcare professionals in a hospital setting. This is a project that may or may not involve a Covid-19 response. The winner will be a project that truly enhances the care a hospital gives and something that makes it demonstrably better than it was in terms of patient care.
Innovation in Healthcare and Medicine
This award is to recognise innovation in healthcare that increases efficiency in delivery, improves patient outcomes, reduces costs or procedures, or introduces a new and effective service, treatment, or system that improves patient care. Innovations in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, the recent influx of Ukrainian refugees or other ‘crises’ will also be considered where healthcare staff have innovated to provide services relating to the crisis.
Innovation in Primary Care Award
General Practice and Primary Care are fundamental to patient care in Ireland, and a growing part of the total healthcare package. Keeping people out of hospital and treating them in their own area is increasingly valuable, both in terms of reducing costs and increasing patient satisfaction.
International Prize of the Year
Through this new prize we celebrate some projects that are improving health and care in other jurisdictions around the world. The award involves the submission of an original project of work on a health issue taking in factors from countries abroad, including Irish or Irish-trained healthcare professionals in the diaspora, and that the project outcomes are beneficial for their local populations. Can/has it been applied to other regions and/or countries (and hopefully Ireland) as well. The projects presented here cover a wide range of health themes.
Mental Health Initiative of the Year
This special award is a direct response to the increase in rates of mental health problems in Ireland, unfortunately expected to have further spiked amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
This prize also flags that mental health has traditionally been stigmatised and underfunded in Ireland, while recognising efforts to combat this serious social issue. The award recognises that there is still much to understand and address in the area of the causes, prevention and treatment of mental health illness, and makes a statement about the importance of facilitating best international practice in mental healthcare.
NCHD Project of the Year
The best initiative implemented by an individual NCHD or team of NCHDs, aimed at quality improvement, education or training, enhancing hospital procedures or improving communication between healthcare professionals.
Nursing Project of the Year
This award is for a nurse- or midwife-led project that recognises the effectiveness of initiatives with clearly defined results and outcomes, originated by an individual nurse or midwife or a team. The advent of Covid-19 has limited the number of nursing projects attempted this year, but in turn, there have been many projects initiated to deal with the fallout of the pandemic.
Outpatient Initiative of the Year
This award recognises innovation or excellence shown in an outpatient setting, for a project aimed at improving the quality of care delivered to this category of patients. This category was especially important this year in terms of delivering services and maintaining services to patients in the pandemic, so this year, the award also recognises initiatives designed to maintain and enhance outpatient services during the Covid-19 crisis.
Patient Education Project of the Year — Non-Pharmaceutical
This award normally goes to Patient Groups – who are also eligible this year – but this year is also extended to any group educating the public about illness. In this year of 2022, that’s very likely to be Covid-19, or related to backlogs created by Covid – and we are looking for the person, institution, non-pharma company or organisation that has done the most to educate the public on a disease or illness.
Patient Education Project of the Year — Pharmaceutical
For projects that have been established or supported by the pharmaceutical industry, aimed at educating patients, carers and the general public. Also included in this category are projects and initiatives designed to educate the public on vaccination, prevention of Covid-19 spread and other pandemic-related initiatives.
Patient Organisation Project of the Year
This award recognizes the work of patient organizations and their efforts to educate both the public and their own patients on issues related to their disease or condition.

Primary Care Innovation of the Year
NEW TO 2022
This is a new award that will be judged separately. It is for an innovation in Primary Care that led to better outcomes for patients, greater efficiencies in clinics, new treatments or methods that lead to better overall Primary Care - and most importantly, an innovation that can be applied generally across other practices.
Free entry
Note: For information on how to enter this category, please see this page.

Public Health Initiative of the Year
This award recognises the most important public health initiative of the year – whether that be directly related or indirectly related to the coronavirus pandemic. There have been many initiatives to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic – and many more to try to negate the effects of the virus on other diseases. This award is for the greatest achievement in public health – an initiative that has saved lives and improved public welfare.

Research Paper of the Year
This award recognises the best piece of research conducted in Ireland that does the most to advance knowledge of medicine and disease – with a particular emphasis on the current pandemic. We have seen the incredibly speedy response science has made to the appearance of the virus in terms of producing a vaccine response. This award goes to a paper that has produced original research that has helped us understand or combat the virus in some way – or equally, helped develop our understanding of another non-Covid19-related disease.
Response to Covid-19 by a Hospital, Patient Group, Doctor or Institution
This one-off award recognises the effectiveness, ingenuity and excellence of projects or initiatives, aimed at or created or developed by healthcare management, hospital doctors, GPs, nurses, pharmacists, other healthcare professionals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has created backlogs in other areas of care. This award recognises attempts and efforts to catch up on those backlogs, as well as specific measures to tackle Covid-19.
Student Project of the Year
The student project of the year is the best student project produced in Ireland during the past year. These have been extraordinary times for students – and particularly for medical students. Despite the difficulties, students have continued their work and this award seeks to reward the project that shows the most important advances in healthcare and medicine.