Welcome to our latest news summary featuring updates from the National Screening Service. To keep up to date with our news, including upcoming events and job opportunities, read our news reports, follow us on X @NSShse, LinkedIn, and on Bluesky @nsshse.
Cervical screening research wins Irish Healthcare Award
Our research on the first Irish data demonstrating the impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer won an Irish Healthcare Award this month.
The award-winning research paper was a collaboration involving the HSE’s National Screening Service and National Immunisation Office (NIO); the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy & Sports Science, University College Dublin; and the School of Public Medicine, Trinity College Dublin.
Lead author and CervicalCheck data analyst Micheál Rourke said: “It’s the first data in Ireland combining CervicalCheck data with NIO data and offers early insights into the potential impact of combined HPV vaccination and cervical screening in reducing cervical disease.”
The effect of HPV vaccination on the rate of high-grade cytology in 25-year-old women attending cervical screening in Ireland is published in the Irish Journal of Medical Science.
Diabetic RetinaScreen conference brings together international stakeholders
Our Diabetic RetinaScreen (DRS) conference, Innovating retina screening and treatment for the future, took place in Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin on 8 November.
The agenda covered topics on the global pandemic of diabetes, and how screening is key to the prevention of diabetic retinopathy; retinopathy screening in Ireland; the future role of artificial intelligence in screening; and innovative new therapies.
In his presentation, DRS Clinical Director Professor David Keegan highlighted that we provided over 804,000 unique screening appointments between 2014 and 2023. The mean age of participants was 61 years, and 59% were male. He said our programme register is growing, with 18,000 to 20,000 new people being registered each year.
Equity in screening – a new digital portal
We’ve developed a digital portal on our corporate website to share information about our ongoing work to improve equity in screening. The portal provides links from a single place to multiple sources of information about our equity projects. These projects aim to address the barriers to screening and to make screening more accessible to everyone.
New disability awareness training for screening services staff
We've developed disability awareness training for staff across our screening services and our screening providers. It’s part of our work to implement recommendations from our disability needs assessment research, and our work to improve equity in screening.
We want to ensure all our staff:
- have a better understanding of disability and the diverse needs of people with disabilities
- can break down the barriers for disabled people to access screening
- can demonstrate that we are a disability-inclusive organisation.
We’ve delivered four training sessions to date: one with our Access Officers, and three with staff across our screening programmes and departments. Almost 80 staff have completed the three-hour training session so far with more training sessions scheduled for 2025.
We value your feedback - please contact us at: communications@screeningservice.ie