Welcome to the first edition of our newsletter for 2025.

This year has gotten off to a busy start as we continue with our work in the areas of standards, evidence synthesis and regulation and prepare for taking on a number of new functions. In this issue, we highlight our recent work to progress this through capturing the voices of people who use services and providing evidence to inform policy decision-making and shape practice.

This year, as part of our overall National Care Experience Programme, undertaken in collaboration with the Department of Health, HSE and patient advocacy groups, the second National Maternity Experience Survey will invite those women who will give birth during February or March to tell us about their experiences. This is a crucial initiative that provides invaluable insights into the experiences of women and will allow us to determine the key areas for improvement within our maternity services. It highlights the voices of mothers and their families, ensuring that their experiences and needs are at the forefront of our efforts to drive positive change.

Last week, we marked Care Day 2025, a day dedicated to amplifying the voices of children and young people in care. This year’s theme, ‘Voices from Care, Ripples of Change’ reminds us of the profound impact that listening to, and responding to these voices can have on shaping and improving better care services for children and young people using them. We will continue to give great prominence to the voices of children and their experiences in our inspection reports and our work.

Last month, we commenced an assessment of the RSV Immunisation Schedule for the 2026-2027 season and beyond. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a significant cause of respiratory illness in young children and older adults. Our health technology assessment will evaluate the clinical effectiveness, cost effectiveness and budgetary impact of alternative RSV immunisation strategies for infants and adults aged 65 years and older, providing valuable evidence to inform national immunisation policies. This initiative underscores our commitment to protecting public health and ensuring that immunisation programmes are based on the best available evidence.

This month, I was also delighted to see our first publication as part of the Centre in Ireland for Clinical guideline support and Evidence Reviews (CICER) project. Funded by the Health Research Board and hosted by HIQA, our CICER work independently reviews evidence and provides scientific support for the development of national clinical guidelines. This protocol outlines how we will conduct a review of international clinical guidelines on the management of acute asthma attack in adults. This review is timely and important as asthma can have a significant impact on the quality of life of people whom suffer with it, and highlights our continued aim of enhancing patient outcomes.

HIQA plays a significant role internationally by advising on and contributing to the development and implementation of high standards in health and social care services. We are always willing to share our expertise and best practices in health and social care regulation with international bodies, and engage in knowledge sharing through participating in conferences, workshops and forums to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. This issue showcases one such recent example where we shared our regulatory and standards development processes with the World Health Organization to support the development of global standards for long-term care.

Informing these developments in policy and practice also involves significant engagement with stakeholders. One of our core values is collaboration. In this context, we look forward to working with the newly-appointed Government Ministers and Oireachtas Committees as we fulfil our current remit. As our role continues to expand and evolve, it is essential as an organisation that we also build relationships with new stakeholders and work with them to achieve our ambition of high-quality and safe services.

Our Corporate Plan 2025-2027 sets out this ambition, and I look forward to sharing with you shortly. This key strategic document also outlines a commitment to developing a People and Culture Strategy for the organisation. In line with this, I am also delighted to share that we recently retained our accreditation with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001: 2015 Quality Management Standard and also received recertification of our Platinum accreditation through the Excellence Through People programme. Both of these are testament to our dedication to continually improving our performance and commitment to quality and excellence in everything we do.

Until next time,

Angela Fitzgerald