Gillian McMahon grew up moving between countries and classrooms. Born in Japan to Irish engineering parents, she spent her early years in the Netherlands and England before returning to Limerick midway through her schooling, carrying with her a mix of accents.
“Moving back to Ireland was probably the hardest move of all,” McMahon says. “Because you’ve spent your life saying you’re Irish, but then you move back and you don’t even sound Irish. Once I started figuring out my new surroundings, I realised that travelling had made me much more alert to the fact that things don’t have to be done one way. You pick up ideas from different places, and you start to think, well, that works better or that could be improved.”
That’s stood to her as a digital health and social care director at Deloitte Ireland. McMahon leads a team of technologists working at the centre of some of the most significant shifts under way across Irish healthcare. And, like her upbringing, her entry to this field wasn’t straightforward either.
“I was completely set on being an accountant,” she laughs. “From the age of nine, that was it, I told everyone. I filled out my CAO forms, but we were encouraged to go to the open day at the University of Limerick and by accident I wandered into a lecture I had no intention of attending and it was on Health Informatics. Two hours later, I went home and changed all my college choices. I’d always felt a strong inclination to care for people, but I was too squeamish to become a nurse or a doctor. The idea that data could help save lives really appealed to me. I saw this as my way to make a contribution.”
READ MORE
Health informatics sits at the intersection of medicine, technology and clinical decision making. McMahon had never heard of it before, but it was beginning to change the shape of how we approach healthcare. “It’s how clinicians get the necessary information needed to care for patients,” she says. “During the course we were looking at how clinical decisions are informed and how systems can support that. We heard from law students debating complex ethical issues and medical and nursing students explaining how care works. It kept bringing me back to the same point – how the technologies we design must have a positive impact on people’s lives.”
For McMahon, who is also mother to a two-year-old, the work is anchored in something more personal than just systems.
“It has always struck me whenever I talk about my job to friends or colleagues I very quickly hear about their journey through the health system. Over the years I have seen and come to appreciate that at the heart of any health record is a person going through that process – often during some of the hardest moments in their lives.
“Innovating in digital health means that when our teams are designing solutions, we are conscious that this is someone’s parent or someone’s child. That’s never abstract and we don’t ever just take data in isolation.”
‘For a long time, we were looking internationally for examples of good practice. Now we are seeing other countries look at what Ireland is doing particularly around AI’
Now McMahon’s focus at Deloitte is on digital health and the initiatives to create a consolidated view of each patient’s journey through the health system, and throughout their lives. The Irish health service plans for digital healthcare will change the way caregivers and patients engage with the health system, and also opens up the potential to use new and emerging technologies to assist in predictive and personalised care.
“It’s one story, told once. The benefits of having easy access to the full patient history are considerable. It also helps to avoid duplication of information and doesn’t rely on patient recall of previous visits, conditions or medication.”
Of course, it’s not a silver bullet and won’t immediately resolve waiting lists or ease staffing pressures overnight. “What it does offer though,” says McMahon, “is something more fundamental. The ability for a patient to move through any care setting with transparency, the same story visible to caregivers in every care setting along the way. In a system under real strain, where staff are stretched and efficiency matters more than ever, digital healthcare can help inform decision making, care co-ordination and, over time, assist with some of the most persistent challenges in Irish health and social care.”
McMahon’s early exposure to different systems has continued to shape how she approaches her work.
“During my career with Deloitte, I worked in Canada and in the US on programmes where multiple hospitals, both public and private, had the benefit of digital healthcare solutions. You could see how much easier it made things. As the world’s number one professional services network, and leaders in digital healthcare transformation, Deloitte brings that global expertise directly to the Irish market. Now focusing on the Irish system, we’ve been able to look at what works elsewhere internationally. That’s a huge advantage.”
Increasingly, she adds, it’s becoming a two-way exchange. “For a long time, we were looking internationally for examples of good practice,” she says. “Now we are seeing other countries look at what Ireland is doing particularly around AI.”
That shift is most visible in the Department of Health’s AI for Care strategy, which has already drawn international attention. “Many of our health and social care clients are asking us about the national AI strategy at the moment and for me, what distinguishes it is the focus on real and practical examples of AI in action. It doesn’t replace the clinician, but it can help them in a variety of ways. We are only beginning to see the true potential of these technologies; and for the future of health and social care, they are game changers.”
For McMahon the real value of digital healthcare has always been clear, since she first stepped into the auditorium at UL. “It’s about the patient. It’s about their wellbeing, their experience. For me, it always comes back to that.”
Explore current healthcare career opportunities at Deloitte Ireland
