Dr. Fiona Mansergh, Assistant Principal, Health and Wellbeing Programme at Department of Health

Fiona is currently working in the Health and Wellbeing Programme in the Department of Health, which has responsibility for co-ordinating the implementation of Healthy Ireland, their National Framework for improved Health and Wellbeing, 2012-2025. Fiona holds the policy briefs for physical activity, sexual health and period poverty, and she is also responsible for managing and collaborating on a number of Surveys (the Healthy Ireland Survey, Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children and others) that provide data to support the Healthy Ireland Framework. Fiona is also a member of the Department’s Women’s Health Taskforce.

With regard to physical activity, her responsibilities include working with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, and with Sport Ireland on implementing the National Physical Activity Plan. Fiona is also a member of the Sports Leadership Group that oversees the National Sports Policy. She works with the Department of Education on physical activity and wellbeing in schools, including the Active School Flag and she is a member of Ireland’s Physical Activity Research Collaboration (I-PARC)

Fiona is a former researcher; she completed a PhD in the genetics of inherited eye diseases (Trinity College, Dublin) and have worked as a post-doctoral researcher in universities in Canada, the UK and Ireland. Fiona then worked for Science Foundation Ireland for a year, before accepting a position in the Civil Service (Department of Health) in 2016.

The National Physical Activity Plan: Research, Monitoring, Evaluation and Data.

The talk will give an overview of the National Physical Activity Plan, focussing on the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Action Area, data sources used to track physical activity and sport participation levels in Ireland, and the collaborative links between data, policy and implementation.

Nicola Graham, Smart City Operations Manager at Dublin City Council

Nicola is passionate about data, innovation, and technology as tools to improve the quality of life for the people of Dublin and the liveability of the region. Nicola joined the Smart Dublin team in 2016. Her main role is to manage the team responsible for driving the open and other data initiatives. Their focus is to stimulate the use of local government data to gain insights, to improve services, to support evidence-based decision making and to provide citizens with access to this information and promote transparency.

Smart D8: Dublin’s Health and Wellbeing district. 

Nicola will talk about the Smart D8 launch, the pilots done to date and future plans.

Katharine Cooney, Data Analyst at Derilinx

Katharine has a career of acting as a senior business and data analyst in a range of industries. Katharine is proficient across a range of commercial and open-source Business Intelligence tools including Power BI, Tableau and SAS. In the Hale & Hearty project Katharine has been heavily involved with the user scenarios and has worked on data assessment, preparation and classification and helping design the user interface and functions.

Mario Romera, – Software developer at Derilinx

Mario is a skilled back-end software developer. He is specialised in Python Development and Open Source Development in general. Mario is the lead developer of the Hale & Hearty project.

Hale & Hearty: Creating a Knowledge Base to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in Ireland

Katharine and Mario will talk about the Hale & Hearty, an EU-funded project that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in Ireland by making information accessible through a Knowledge Base. You will learn about the project itself and the visualisation and advanced search functionalities developed to deliver a user-friendly experience, facilitating access to information – with the goal of making open health and wellbeing data more accessible and useful.

Catherine Carty, UNESCO Chair Manager at Munster Technological University

UNESCO is the UN Agency with Responsibility for Physical Education, Physical Activity and Sport. MTU was awarded a UNESCO Chair in 2013 and they currently lead the global response to the inclusive policy actions of the Kazan Action Plan. The Chair is entitled “Transforming the Lives of People with Disabilities, their families and communities through PE, Sport, Recreation and Fitness”. The Chair now works intersectionally. with UNESCO and other UN agencies, as well as governmental and non-governmental agencies on this agenda, to advocate -no one is left behind – starting with the most vulnerable.

Fit for Life: using sport to drive health, education and equality outcomes

Catherine will be speaking about Fit for Life, UNESCO’s sport-based flagship designed to accelerate COVID-19 recovery, support inclusive and integrated policymaking, and enhance the well-being of youth around the world. Powered by a global compact of partners, Fit for Life uses data-driven sport interventions to tackle intersecting crises in physical inactivity, mental health and inequality.

Allison Savich, Strategic Lead for Innovation & Digital at Sport England, 

Allison has worked in the sector for over 12 years, and has accumulated expertise in the fields of insight, behaviour change and finance. Allison leads Sport England’s work on data, digital and innovation, where their mission is to support others to apply data, innovation & digital in ways that help to improve the experience of getting active. She is particularly passionate about applying these topics to reduce the systemic inequalities and barriers that are stopping people from benefiting from being physically active.

The current work of her team includes ground-breaking sector change initiatives, such as testing the latest data analytic technologies, guiding the strategic direction of OpenActive (which uses open data to help people get active), and testing Sport England’s role in growing & supporting innovation through a range of approaches, including an Innovation Open Call, work with the Design Council and our Innovation Learning Partner. Her team is also working in partnership with ukactive to evaluate the sectors digital maturity & effectiveness via their new Digital Futures programme, while exploring critical topics such as digital inclusion & accessibility. 

Charlie Clarke, Commercial Director at Playfinder

Charlie sits at the intersection between the commercial opportunities of digital and its applications across the sport, physical activity, and leisure sector. He has been involved in the OpenActive initiative since its inception 6 years ago. Throughout he has interfaced with the sector as a supplier, with a wealth of first-hand experience working with organisations to both use and publish open sport and physical activity data. This is complemented by being an OpenActive Champion and more recently acting in a trustee-style role to the initiative as a member of the OpenActive Steering Committee.

Charlie is passionate about the hugely positive impact open data can have on the user experience of finding, accessing and subsequently enjoying sport and activity. His most recent work has focused on the Department for Education’s Holiday Activity and Food programme, that saw £220m in funding distributed via Local Authorities in 2021 to provide opportunities for disadvantaged young people to access holiday activity provision along with a healthy meal during their school holidays, a work area that generated 400,000 searches and over 100,000 bookings, reaching over 52,000 young people.

OpenActive: Our journey of creating open data infrastructure to help people move more

Allison and Charlie, as members of the OpenActive Steering Committee, will speak about the highs and lows of the journey the sport and physical activity sector in England has been on since November 2016 to create critical data infrastructure that is needed to help people move more. We will share more detail on the data standards & tools we have created to help partners open up data about when, where & how physical activity opportunities are happening in local areas, share our learnings to date and discuss where we are going next, to make this a sustainable journey for all involved.

Darragh O’Sullivan, Project Manager at Sport Ireland

Darragh O’Sullivan is an experienced Outdoor Recreation Consultant and GIS Project Lead with a varied background including physics, business analysis, adventure sports instruction and Chinese Medicine.

Answering the question “Where can I be active in Ireland?” with the National Database of Sport & Recreation Amenities

Darragh’s talk will focus on his current project, the development of a National Database of Sport & Recreation Amenities, led by Sport Ireland. Darragh will share the overall vision of the project, the approach taken and the progress to date, highlighting the benefits it will have for both citizens and the public administration.

Peter Tierney, Senior Research Scientist at lululemon Product Innovation | Advanced Concepts and former Sports Scientist & Athletic Performance Coach at Leinster Rugby and The Football Association

Peter Tierney is currently a Senior Research Scientist in the lululemon Product Innovation Team, based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Prior to this, he spent 8 years within high performance sport, more recently with the English Football Association, and previously Leinster Rugby. He held “hybrid” positions within both organisations, blending elements of sports science & research with strength & conditioning responsibilities. He completed his PhD whilst working full time in both Leinster and the The FA. Peter also has strong experiences and interests in general population health, physical activity, and the application of wearable technology to both sport and life!

Using open data to support training direction & decisions  

Peter  will be sharing some of the research he completed with Leinster Rugby. He used open data from the European Champions Cup to identify key performance indicators that differentiate success in the Champions Cup. This research also helped inform training decisions around how best to physically prepare the players for winning.