Ireland's health service has a well documented problem. Waiting lists are among the longest in Europe. The system needs over 3,000 additional doctors and nearly 9,000 more nurses by 2035. An ageing population, with 15 percent of citizens already over 65 and that figure projected to rise by a further 30 percent, is driving demand that current infrastructure cannot absorb.
The government's answer, at least in part, is artificial intelligence.
Published in 2026, AI for Care is Ireland's National AI Strategy for Healthcare, covering the period through to 2030. Jointly commissioned by Department of Health - Ireland and Health Service Executive , it is the most detailed policy commitment Ireland has made to deploying AI within its public health system. It covers clinical diagnostics, hospital operations, pharmaceutical research, and population health. It comes with a governance framework, a compliance architecture aligned to the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, and a phased deployment roadmap spanning twenty-four defined priority opportunities.
For Ireland's pharmaceutical and life sciences sector, one of the most concentrated in the world, the strategy signals something more significant than a government technology initiative. It signals the beginning of a fundamental shift in the data, regulatory, and research environment within which the industry operates.
The Scale of the Problem AI Is Being Asked to Solve
To understand why AI for Care matters, it helps to understand the scale of the challenge the Irish health system faces.
Ireland's population is growing and ageing simultaneously. Census data shows a 22 percent increase in the over-65 population between 2016 and 2022. Population forecasts project a further 30 percent rise. The health service is already under pressure, with rising wait times, clinician burnout, staff shortages, and administrative inefficiencies compounding the demand challenge.
The government's Productivity and Savings Taskforce, established in 2024, identified AI as one of the key enablers for productivity improvement across the health service. The task force's Action Plan for 2025 set a clear expectation that AI would be used to deliver a greater volume of care more efficiently within existing funding constraints.
AI for Care is the strategic response to that expectation. It is not a research paper. It is an implementation commitment with defined timelines, governance structures, and accountability mechanisms.
What the Strategy Actually Does
AI for Care organises its ambitions across four strategic pillars, each with specific priority opportunities assigned to deployment horizons.
Clinical Care
In year one, the HSE will begin deploying AI across medical imaging, clinical decision support, and clinical documentation. AI-assisted imaging analysis for radiology, cardiology, dermatology, and endoscopy is a near-term priority. A case study in the strategy describes an Irish university hospital that doubled its clot detection rates by deploying AI across every patient CT scan continuously, with results delivered to emergency physicians within two minutes of acquisition.
AI-generated clinical notes, discharge summaries, and patient reports are also a year-one priority, reducing the administrative burden on clinical staff and freeing time for patient care. Ambient scribing technology, which captures and summarises clinical encounters in real time, is specifically identified.
Operations
The operational pillar addresses the machinery of running a large public health system. Year-one priorities include demand and capacity management, contact centre automation, and support function automation covering HR, finance, and procurement. AI-driven forecasting for bed demand, operating theatre scheduling, and workforce planning are identified as near-term deployments. The strategy references evidence that AI-driven inventory management in hospital supply chains has reduced costs by up to 30 percent while maintaining availability of essential supplies.
Research and Innovation
This is the pillar with the most direct relevance to pharmaceutical and life sciences professionals. The strategy identifies a structured pipeline of AI opportunities across the research lifecycle.
- Research governance automation to streamline ethics committee submissions and Data Protection Impact Assessments
- AI-driven clinical trial recruitment using patient matching across electronic health records, genetic data, and diagnostic information
- Clinical trial management using machine learning for bias detection, patient record linking, and real-time adverse trend monitoring
- A shared research data platform enabling cross-regional data harmonisation and collective analysis
- Clinical audit automation and large-scale data analysis for quality improvement and service innovation
The research data platform opportunity is the most consequential for the industry. If realised, it would create a nationally significant asset for real-world evidence generation, pharmacovigilance, and population-level outcomes research. Ireland's life sciences sector should treat this as a development worth tracking closely.
Public Health
In the public health pillar, AI will be applied to population health risk prediction in year one, with population-based screening programmes, evidence synthesis, and policy creation following in years two and three. The HSE's National Screening
Service has already established a plan for deploying AI across BreastCheck, CervicalCheck, BowelScreen, and Diabetic RetinaScreen. A Swedish clinical trial referenced in the strategy found that AI-assisted mammography screening detected 29 percent more cancers than conventional radiologist double reading, while reducing radiologist workload by 44 percent.
The Regulatory Architecture Pharma Needs to Understand
AI for Care is not just a deployment roadmap. It is a regulatory framework, and its alignment with the EU Artificial Intelligence Act has direct implications for any company bringing AI-enabled health technology into the Irish market.
Clinical AI solutions classified as AI as a medical device are treated as high risk under the EU AI Act. This means mandatory fundamental rights impact assessments, registration on the National AI Registry, and structured clinical risk management review before deployment. The HSE's AI Implementation Framework, published alongside AI for Care, sets out the specific compliance pathways.
HIQA is developing forthcoming national guidance on the responsible and safe use of AI in health and social care that will sit alongside the Implementation Framework. Life sciences and health technology companies operating in Ireland will need to navigate both layers simultaneously.
The strategy also references alignment with the World Health Organisation's Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health framework, adding a third layer of ethical governance principles covering human autonomy, safety, transparency, accountability, inclusiveness, and sustainability.
For companies developing AI-enabled diagnostics, clinical decision support platforms, or automated trial management tools for the Irish market, the message is clear. Regulatory compliance must be built into product architecture from the outset, not retrofitted at the point of procurement submission.
The Data Question
HSE CEO Bernard Gloster is direct about the dependency at the heart of this strategy. Good data is essential for using AI safely and effectively in healthcare. The importance of good data cannot be overstated.
AI for Care frames data infrastructure as a prerequisite for the entire programme. The Electronic Health Record, the National Shared Care Record, and the HSE Health App are identified as the structural foundations that will generate the interoperable, high-quality data AI systems require. The pace of their implementation will directly determine how quickly AI capabilities can be scaled.
The HSE's forthcoming Data Strategy will govern how data is accessed, shared, and reused. It commits to common standards, trusted identification systems, and secure interoperability frameworks. For pharmaceutical companies engaged in real-world evidence research or pharmacovigilance, the maturation of this data strategy is a key enabling condition for deeper engagement with the Irish health system.
Patients are positioned throughout the strategy as active guardians of their own health data, with the ability to manage third-party access. The consent and data governance implications for research partnerships and secondary data use are significant and will require careful navigation.
Why This Matters for Ireland's Life Sciences Sector
Ireland is home to nine of the world's top ten pharmaceutical companies. The country exports more pharmaceutical products per capita than any other nation in the EU. Its life sciences sector is not a peripheral industry. It is a structural pillar of the national economy.
The strength of that sector depends in part on the quality of the research, regulatory, and clinical environment Ireland provides. AI for Care improves that environment in ways that are directly relevant to pharmaceutical investment and operational decisions.
A more efficient clinical trial infrastructure, supported by AI-driven recruitment and management tools, makes Ireland a more competitive destination for pharmaceutical-sponsored trials. A shared research data platform creates new possibilities for evidence generation and outcomes research. A regulatory framework aligned to the EU AI Act provides the clarity that technology partners and investors require. A health system capable of generating and sharing high-quality interoperable data at scale creates opportunities for pharmacovigilance, precision medicine research, and real-world evidence programmes that are difficult to replicate in less mature digital health environments.
The People and Organisations Who Built This Strategy
AI for Care was developed through a Working Group of over thirty stakeholders. Their involvement reflects the breadth of the strategy's ambitions and the consensus behind it.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD , Minister for Health provided political leadership and mandate for the strategy, framing AI adoption as a governance and public trust challenge as much as a technology one.
Bernard Gloster , CEO of the Health Service Executive anchored the strategy's operational credibility, emphasising data quality, workforce complementarity, and the role of the Chief Data and Analytics Office as a key enabler.
HIQA - Health Information and Quality Authority shaped the strategy's safety and regulatory architecture and is leading the development of forthcoming national guidance on responsible AI use in health and social care.
IPPOSI , the Irish Platform for Patient Organisations, Science, and Industry convened the national citizens' jury whose recommendations directly informed the strategy's guiding principles, ensuring patient and public voice was embedded in the strategy's design.
The Department of Public Expenditure Infrastructure Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DPER) contributed its guidelines for responsible AI use in the public service, providing the definitional and compliance framework within which the HSE operates.
HealthTech Ireland represented the health technology industry, ensuring commercial and innovation perspectives were integrated into the roadmap's prioritisation.
Patient Advocacy participated directly in the Working Group alongside IPPOSI, reinforcing that patient-centred design was a structural commitment rather than a rhetorical one.
Clinicians, Regional Executive Officers, Academic Partners, and Regulators from across the HSE contributed the clinical and operational knowledge that grounds the strategy's priority opportunities in practical healthcare realities.
International Health and Technology Sector Experts ensured the strategy was benchmarked against AI health strategies in comparable jurisdictions, drawing on global evidence for what AI can deliver at scale in complex health systems.
Ireland's health system has deep structural problems that AI alone will not solve. But AI for Care is a serious, well-governed, and practically grounded strategy. For pharmaceutical and life sciences professionals operating in or with Ireland, the deployment of this roadmap over the next five years will reshape the research, regulatory, and clinical environment in ways that create both obligations and opportunities.
Next Steps and Activation: What Happens Now
The HSE's AI Implementation Framework is the primary instrument through which AI for Care will be activated. An implementation plan has already been developed, based on the use cases identified across the twenty-four priority opportunities in the strategic roadmap. That implementation plan requires approval by the HSE Senior Leadership Team along with the necessary funding commitments before deployment can begin at scale. Strategic partnerships will be sought for AI configuration projects, and where best-of-breed solutions are available in the market, they will be identified and implemented rather than developed from scratch within the health system.
The first and most immediate activation priority is building AI literacy across the workforce, patients, and service users. The strategy identifies educational initiatives as crucial for building a knowledgeable workforce capable of engaging effectively with AI technologies as they are deployed. The approach described is deliberately bottom-up, with leadership across the health system expected to develop foundational AI proficiency in order to build a culture of understanding that supports adoption at the frontline. Public education initiatives are also planned to ensure that the Irish population has a baseline level of AI literacy, recognising that public trust is a prerequisite for the strategy's success.
As the strategic roadmap is activated, the HSE and Department of Health have committed to continuing collaboration with all key stakeholders on the development and finalisation of the strategic imperatives that are interdependent with AI for Care. This includes the HSE Data Strategy, HIQA's national guidance on responsible AI use, and the broader Digital for Care programme. These are not parallel workstreams. They are structurally dependent on each other, and the strategy is explicit that progress on AI deployment is contingent on progress across all of them.
Because AI for Care and the AI Implementation Framework are described as living documents, all AI projects will be continuously monitored and evaluated as they are implemented. The strategy commits to a process of ongoing learning through each AI project, with the strategy itself being assessed and refined as evidence accumulates from real deployments. This is not a set-and-forget policy commitment. It is designed to be iterated as the technology, the regulatory environment, and the needs of the health service evolve.
For life sciences and pharmaceutical professionals, this activation framework has practical implications. The HSE AI and Automation Centre of Excellence will function as an enabling body to scale AI initiatives, register projects on the National AI Registry as mandated under the EU AI Act, and provide implementation support and guidance. Companies seeking to engage with the Irish health system as technology partners or research collaborators should expect to interact with this centre as a key point of contact for AI project governance and approval. The phased proof of concept, pilot, and national scale-up process described in the strategy means that engagement early in the deployment cycle, at the proof of concept stage, offers the greatest opportunity to shape how AI solutions are implemented and evaluated within the system.
The strategy is also clear that the roadmap does not preclude local AI initiatives outside the national programme. Regional Executive Offices can identify and progress AI deployment opportunities independently, with the Centre of Excellence available to provide guidance and support. For pharmaceutical companies with existing relationships at hospital or regional level, this creates pathways for engagement that do not require navigation of the full national governance process from the outset.
Ireland's health system has deep structural problems that AI alone will not solve. But AI for Care is a serious, well-governed, and practically grounded strategy. The activation steps it commits to are specific, sequenced, and accountable. For pharmaceutical and life sciences professionals operating in or with Ireland, the deployment of this roadmap over the next five years will reshape the research, regulatory, and clinical environment in ways that create both obligations and significant opportunities.
The question for the industry is not whether to engage with this shift. It is how quickly and how strategically to do so.
Read the full report here:
https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/b13b9ebc/AI_for_Care_2026-2030_Final_for_web.pdf
