CISC a participant in new � 19m REMEDI centre at NUI Galway

Monday 5th January 2004

The Centre for Innovation & Structural Change (CISC) at NUI Galway is a participant in REMEDI, the new Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Regenerative Medicine Research Institute at NUI Galway. SFI will fund Euro 15m of the work programme, and industrial partners will contribute Euro 5m. REMEDI will specialise in basic and applied research in regenerative medicine to develop new therapies for human diseases that are currently incurable.

CISC supporting REMEDI outreach

CISC's particular role will be to support REMEDI in its outreach activities, particularly in respect of interactions with policy makers and the business community. Outreach programmes are a vital part of SFI funded initiatives, intended to engage to broadest range of participating from the wider community in the ongoing dialogue about science
and society.

Socio-economic work by CISC at REMEDI

CISC also has a specific programme of research within REMEDI, focussing on the socio-economic aspects of stem cell and gene therapy research. This work will draw from perspectives on new medical technologies from the economics of technological change and innovation, and also from health economics analyses, including cost of illness evaluations. The potentially enormous opportunities for improving quality of life arising from the therapies developed by REMEDI will be explored in this research, and this may in turn help to inform priority setting in health research and service provision policy. This health economics element of CISC's contribution will be led by Dr Eamon O'Shea, of the Department of Economics at NUI, Galway, who is a specialist in the fields of health economics and evaluation. Other personnel currently at CISC have been engaged in work relating to the development of a medical devices cluster of industrial activity in the Border Midlands West Region, and in particular, along the Atlantic Technology Corridor, and these interests and experience will inform REMEDI's mission in developing the industrial base in the region and Ireland more generally.

More details on this project are available at the link below


http://www.cisc.ie/research/project_detail.php?project_code=1022