Research Projects
Research into healthcare data transparency, clinical AI adoption, and socio-technical systems — the analytical depth behind the applied work.
Atlas Project · UCD Master's Research
Clinical Data Transparency Ontology
Problem: Healthcare data lifecycles are opaque — it's often impossible to trace where a data point came from, who acted on it, or why it looks the way it does.
Approach: Built an ontology using PROV-O and SEIPS to formally represent data provenance, actor accountability, and workflow context in clinical environments. Combined data flow diagrams, UML modelling, and data value mapping.
Outcome: A structured, queryable model of how data moves and changes across clinical systems — making the invisible visible.
→ Produced a queryable provenance model making clinical data flows transparent and auditable
SEIPS Work System Project · UCD
Healthcare Work System Ontology
Problem: AI systems in healthcare are often evaluated on technical performance alone, ignoring the work systems they are embedded in — the people, tasks, tools, and environments that determine whether a system succeeds or fails.
Approach: Developed a formal ontology based on the SEIPS (Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety) model to represent healthcare work systems and their socio-technical context around data use and AI adoption.
Outcome: A reusable semantic model that supports systematic analysis of how AI interacts with clinical work — applicable to governance, procurement, and deployment evaluation.
→ Reusable semantic model applicable to AI governance, procurement, and deployment evaluation
Industrial Placement · St. James's Hospital Dublin
Clinical Data Flow Mapping & Governance
Problem: A major acute hospital had fragmented data collection, unclear reporting accountability, and gaps between what was recorded and what was clinically meaningful.
Approach: Analysed data collection and quality-management practices across hospital departments. Mapped data flows, identified governance gaps, and documented reporting standards for clinical and senior operational stakeholders.
Outcome: Structured outputs and workflow maps that surfaced systemic data-quality issues — and informed how similar problems could be addressed at a design level, not just operationally.
→ Outputs and workflow maps used by senior clinical and operational stakeholders
ID4AI Project · UCD
Inclusive Design for Healthcare AI
Problem: AI systems in healthcare are frequently designed without meaningful input from the people who will use them — leading to poor adoption, workarounds, and outcomes that fall short of expectations.
Approach: Contributing to research on inclusive design principles for healthcare AI — examining how AI systems can be designed to serve diverse clinical users, with attention to transparency, adoption, and human-centred deployment.
Outcome: Ongoing research outputs and frameworks supporting responsible AI adoption in clinical settings.
→ Ongoing: contributing to human-centred frameworks for clinical AI adoption