On 2 June, patient safety and governance leads from across Ireland gathered at the Clayton Hotel Dublin Airport for Ideagen Healthcare Guardian's first Patient Safety Leaders Summit in Ireland. With the Patient Safety Act 2023 now in force and the 7-day notification requirement a live obligation for healthcare organisations across the country, the timing felt right. The conversation that followed confirmed it.

Setting the scene

The Patient Safety Act 2023 has changed what Irish healthcare organisations are accountable for. For the first time, notifiable incidents must be formally reported to HIQA or the Mental Health Commission within seven calendar days of becoming aware — a requirement that demands fast, reliable, and well-documented processes from the moment an incident occurs.

For many organisations, that has surfaced a challenge that was already there: data spread across systems that were never designed to work together, and governance processes built for a different era of reporting obligations.

What the room told us

Our opening workshop put four questions to the room and let the conversation take its own shape. What came back was honest and consistent.

Fragmented data was the thread running through almost every response. Incidents in one system, audits in another, risk registers somewhere else — and patient feedback sitting entirely separately. The organisations in the room weren't struggling because they didn't understand their obligations. They were struggling because the infrastructure underneath those obligations wasn't built for what's now being asked of it.

NIMS compliance surfaced specific concerns: too many people involved in the notification process, no feedback loop from the national body after submission, and data being collected at source that didn't match what was actually needed for reporting. These aren't abstract problems — they're the practical reality of meeting a seven-day deadline when your process relies on manual steps and individual judgement rather than systemised workflows.

The human factors discussion was one of the most candid of the afternoon. Disclosure culture, fear of repercussion, and the challenge of building psychological safety in environments where staff don't always feel believed when they raise concerns. Governance infrastructure matters, but the culture it operates within matters just as much.

Peer insight from SpaMedica

Rebecca Aston, Clinical Governance Manager at SpaMedica, joined us as our guest case study speaker. Her account of how SpaMedica reduced incident recording time from over 20 minutes to under four minutes — and rebuilt their governance infrastructure from the ground up to support compliance — resonated strongly with the room.

What made it land was the honesty. The challenges, the decisions that didn't go to plan, and what she'd do differently. Peer-to-peer insight of that kind carries a weight that no vendor presentation can replicate, and it showed in the quality of the conversation that followed.

What AI is doing for governance teams today

Paul Clinton, Head of Product at Ideagen Healthcare Guardian, walked the room through the six AI capabilities that are live and in active use today — from smarter incident categorisation to action planning support and sentiment analysis. The session was deliberately grounded: not a roadmap, but an honest account of where AI is already reducing the administrative burden on governance teams.

The debate that followed was exactly the kind we'd hoped for. Genuine appetite for tools that release time back to care, combined with clear-eyed concern about data quality, GDPR, and the risk of over-reliance. The demonstration of agentic AI — a capability that sits just over the horizon from what's live today — addressed several of those concerns directly and left the room with a clearer picture of where the technology is heading.

For more information on AI in healthcare, take a look at our guides for acute trusts and community, residential and mental health services.

The conversation continues

If you missed the session on the day, all the incredible presenters are available to watch on demand. Click here to watch all the sessions.

If you'd like to see how Ideagen Healthcare Guardian supports patient safety governance for Irish healthcare organisations, book your time with an expert today.