‘Enterprise Engagement in Education (EEE) Pathways and Supports Project

The EEE Pathways and Supports Project is a collaborative initiative between CEEN and HECA, focused on promoting enterprise engagement within the HEI, to both inform and contribute to the delivery of entrepreneurship education. From a teaching and learning perspective, enterprise engagement is integral to the development of activity based pedagogies; a critical component of ‘learning by doing’ entrepreneurship education approaches. Working across HEI partners, the project seeks to map and document approaches to enterprise engagement across the CEEN/ HECA networks

Market dimensions of industrial juice production

The juice sector is currently demonstrating positive and dynamic growth mainly due to a change in lifestyle, the tendency of consumers to prefer healthy products, and an increase in purchasing power. Fruit juices form part of what are termed the “new age beverages.” In sync with growing consumer inclination toward healthier choices, manufacturers are moving over to healthier ingredients in their juices. Numerous new and innovative products are being launched globally by manufacturers to stimulate sales through innovations in flavor blends, calorie and sweetness levels, and functional benefits, very much shaped by the major lifestyle trends. This chapter aims to offer insight and overview of the trends, opportunities, and threats of the fruit juice industry and highlight the factors affecting consumers’ food choices and innovations in fruit juice marketing

Conducting and Analysing Semi-Structured Interviews: A Study of Open Innovation in Food Firms in Ireland.

This case study examines the use of semi-structured interviews that I used in my PhD research as a method to explore open innovation in food firms in Ireland. Literature in the field highlights that exploring innovation and the extent to which firms are open and collaborative with people outside of their organizations in conducting innovation requires detailed understanding of the concept in its natural settings. To interpret or make sense of the phenomena in terms of the meaning managers bring to it, I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with managers in Ireland’s largest indigenous industry, the food and beverage sector. Demonstrating some of the methodological challenges of conducting research in an organizational context, this case details how the in-depth semi-structured interviews were designed and conducted, and the process of analyzing and interpreting the data. The aim is to provide an insight into how to conduct research with managerial population to gain rich data that can help understand an organizational phenomenon

Review of Current Healthcare Waste Management Methods and Their Effect on Global Health

Healthcare is a rapidly growing industry as medical treatments become more sophisticated, more in demand due to increasing incidence of chronic disease and more widely available worldwide. This booming industry is also creating more waste than ever before and, as such, there is a growing need to treat and dispose of this waste. Healthcare waste (HCW) disposal includes a multitude of disposal methods, including incineration, landfilling and chemical treatments. These rudimentary methods and their growing use present their own problems that negatively impact both the environ- ment and, in turn, damage public health, thus contributing to a global healthcare crisis. The aim of this review was to examine the current HCW disposal methods in place and the harmful effects they have on the environment and on public health. The findings accumulated in this review demonstrate a heavy reliance on basic, low tech HCW disposal techniques and uncovered the negative impacts of these methods. There is a notable lack of employment of “greener” HCW disposal methods on a largescale due to cost, access and feasibility. Despite innovations in HCW disposal, there is no scalable, global green solution at present. Further, the review highlights that global health consequences of HCW disposal methods often differ depending on how developed the country is

A Study of Consumer Behaviour Towards Food Waste in Ireland: Attitudes, Quantities and Global Warning Potentials

This study aimed to investigate consumer behaviour towards food waste in Ireland by analysing their attitudes and quantities of food waste generated. Global warming potential of the food waste generated weekly is then assessed. A total of 2115 participants from all over the Republic of Ireland contributed to the survey (of which 2062 were included in this research). Using factor and cluster analysis, two clusters of consumers were formed based on their attitudes towards food waste, and it was found that 62.56% of the sample were ‘uncaring’ consumers and 37.44% were ‘caring’ consumers. The uncaring consumers consisted of more young males and were relatively unphased by food waste and take minimal precautions to reduce food waste at all stages of consumption. In contrast, caring consumers consisted of older and female consumers and were deeply disturbed by food waste, taking all precautions to reduce food waste at every stage of consumption. Regarding food waste quantities, uncaring consumers produced on average, 0.74 kg of food waste weekly, accounting for 2.74 kg of CO2 equivalent in global warming potential, whereas caring consumers produced only half this amount. Our results thus suggest that consumers attitudes towards food waste directly impact the food waste quantities they generate and consequently the global warming effects. However, in Ireland all consumer groups can benefit from more information about food waste and our study contributes by providing information that can inform strategic communication campaigns at policy or organisational level, to educates consumers about food waste and how they are contributing to global warming

Do greenhouse gases impact our respiratory system? A study of the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on respiratory disease related mortality in Ireland

Respiratory-related deaths are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality every year in the developed world. Previous research outlines that greenhouse gas emission levels have a negative effect on respiratory health and can cause worsening of symptoms. This study examines the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on respiratory disease related mortality in Ireland from 2007-2017 using Statbank data from Central Statistics Office, Ireland. Analysis shows that over the last decade, while greenhouse gases emissions in Ireland have reduced by 1.1%, respiratory disease related mortality has increased on an average by 2.1%. Results indicate that greenhouse gas emis- sions have no significant relationship (p\u3e0.05) with deaths as a result of respiratory diseases, indi- cating that the increasing levels of respiratory disease related mortality in Ireland cannot be at- tributed to greenhouse gas emissions

Medication Adherence with Smart Phones: Pharmacists Focused Apps

Medication adherence relates to the concept of compliance to a medicine regimen and is defined as ‘the extent to which a patient acts in accordance with the prescribed interval and dose of a dosing regimen’ (Cramer et al., 2008). Often desired health outcomes are not achieved due to patients, not taking their prescribed medication or taking them incompletely or inconsistently (Miller et al., 1997). This results in higher negative health outcomes and increasing cost of care and is therefore a growing global concern. Tackling the problem of non-adherence requires a collaborative, patient-centric approach and can be guided by modern technologies that offer efficient ways to managing healthcare (Williams et al., 2014). Over the last two decades, the internet has revamped the way information is accessed and mobile devices have taken this a step further by allowing users to access any and every information they want at their fingertips. The availability of over one and a half million applications or apps for download endorses the growing interest in the technology (Bexley et al., 2010). Mobile apps can provide an opportunity for both the healthcare professional and the patient to access user-friendly ways of accessing important medical information quickly, for improving patient health and advancing support and care (Choi et al. 2015; Miller et al., 1997). According to the eMarketer1, 2014, about 58.2% of the global population was using mobile phones in 2012; this percentage increased to 61.1% in 2013 and is further expected to increase to 69.4% of the world’s population by 2017. As of April 2014, 62% of smartphone users have searched for health information using their devices. Evidently, mobile is rapidly becoming the preferred consumer channel for communication including health services. Mobile-HealthNews.com2 highlights that the Apple App Store already has about 6,000 mobile health related apps, indicating consumers’ interest in a more active role in their own health management

Connected Health: An Open Innovation Perspective.

The concept of connected health has gained traction in recent years as a new technology enabled and networked model of health care delivery. It is often used as an umbrella term for eHealth, digital health, health informatics, telemedicine, mHealth and involves the establishment and management of a network of stakeholders with the aim of improving health care quality and out- comes. Yet a lack of open interactions and knowledge networks and the missing integration of the larger constituency of interdisciplinary experts are limiting the execution of the model and restricting its potential to devise services and interventions around patient’s needs with shared health related data. Drawing parallels between the concept of connected health and open innovation, the networked innovation model, which involves efficient management of knowledge flows and complex networks for successful innovations; in this paper we outline the practice of open innovation in health care and suggest connecting stakeholders in the health care ecosystem in an open innovative format. In doing so we present a categorization of firms in the health care ecosystem into open innovation profiles for getting connected and propose an open innovative framework for maximizing the potential of the concept of connected health

Adopting an open innovation paradigm: managerial perceptions and the innovation value chain

This study explores the adoption of open innovation (OI) practices in medium-sized and large firms in a sector characterised by low levels of external collaborations. Many firms struggle to adopt OI practices (O'Connell, 2011); the processes that lead to the adoption of OI practices are unclear (Mortara and Minshall, 2011); and the degree of open innovation, as measured by the number of external collaborations, in Irish firms is low (Vahter et al., 2012). This inductive study is based on case studies of a significant innovation in four medium-sized (€50m to €500m) and four large (Revenue above €500m) firms from the food sector in Ireland. In each of the firms, multiple senior managers (CEOs, innovation managers and marketing managers) were interviewed about the origin of the innovative idea; the management of the innovation; and the role of external partners and customers in the innovation process. Within and cross case analysis finds that the adoption of OI innovation practices are most common at the early stage of the innovation value chain (IVC); that managerial perceptions of competitive threats appear to limit the extent to which firms adopt OI practices at the conversion stage of the IVC; that at the diffusion stage OI practices are largely limited to collaborations with customers; and managers regard external interactions for market orientation as being open in their innovation processes. In terms of the process of adoption, the smaller firms in this study are characterised by ad-hoc adoption of OI practices, while in the larger firms there is some evidence of more ‘conscious adoption’ of OI practices (Mortara and Minshall, 2011). Contributions include an argument that OI practices differ by stages of the innovation process; that managerial perceptions limit the adoption of OI practices; that market orientation may be regarded as a subset of open innovation; and the development of emerging work that explores the adoption of OI in non-‘high-tech’ contexts