Edel Burton is a Clinical Pharmacist at Bon Secours Hospital Cork and a Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy Practice at the School of Pharmacy, University College Cork (UCC). Her work spans clinical practice, education, and health services research, with a particular focus on optimising medicines use across hospital and primary care settings. Edel’s research interests include pharmacoepidemiology, rational prescribing, and the use of real-world data to inform safer, more effective, and more sustainable medication practices.
A central theme of Edel’s work is the translation of research into practice and policy. She has extensive experience working with clinicians, patients, professional bodies, and policymakers to ensure that evidence is not only generated, but meaningfully applied to improve patient care. Her approach is strongly practice-informed, drawing on her ongoing clinical role to identify relevant research questions and implementation challenges.

Helen qualified as a pharmacist over 20 years ago. She has worked in both Community and Hospital Pharmacy settings. For the last 10 years, she has worked in the Phoenix Pharmacy. The pharmacy supplies medication and clinical services to a variety of settings, including the Phoenix Care Centre, St Ita’s Hospital Intellectual disability service and the programme for the Homeless.
She is an active member of the Multi-Disciplinary Team in each of the sites, and she is a member of a number of hospital committees, including Drugs and Therapeutics, Audit committees and Quality & Safety committees.
She has presented lectures to medical and nursing staff on patient safety, prescribing and polypharmacy. She has attended the College of Mental Health conference in the UK, which focuses on new developments in mental health.

Pia has worked in the learning, development and training space for more than 20 years. She has a M. Sc. in Education and Training Management and numerous qualifications in Coaching, Digital Learning, Organisational Development, Personality Profiling including Emotional Intelligence, Neuro Linguistic Programming and more. She has worked as a Learning and Development Manager for organisations such as Abbott and Abbvie, SEAI and more and has delivered training courses and development programmes for many organisations and public sector bodies. She is currently responsible for the IPU Professional Academy, which includes the CPD webinar programme, the Pharmacy Technicians course and other pharmacy staff courses.

Professor Mary Horgan is interim Chief Medical Officer and Professor of Infectious Diseases at UCD and Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. She is the immediate past President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and is the first woman to hold this position since the College’s foundation in 1654. She is the former Dean of the School of Medicine at UCC and was the first woman to be appointed to this position. She is a graduate of UCD School of Medicine in 1986 and was awarded the UCD Alumni Award for Health in 2019. She is a Director of Education of the European Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (ESCMID). She also served on the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) and led the expert advisory group on rapid testing and chaired Ireland’s first National Research Ethics Committee.

Kate has worked at the highest level of sport for almost 20 years and has attended the London, Rio, Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games as a psychologist with Team Ireland. Through her position as a senior psychologist in the Sport Ireland Institute, she has worked directly with medal-winning athletes from Olympic rowing, Olympic sailing and Paralympic swimming. She has also supported World and European medalists from a range of sports such as athletics, women’s hockey, taekwondo, badminton and modern pentathlon.

More recently, Kate has transferred her high-performance expertise from sport to business, and regularly speaks at corporate events throughout Ireland and abroad.

Originally from Clonakilty, Co. Cork, Kate now lives in Dublin with her husband and 2 children.

Sinead is working as a community pharmacist in Dublin City Centre and she has  worked in community pharmacy for 25 years. Having trained & worked in the UK, Sinead developed a strong background in service provision. Ms Lanigan worked within community service teams to help support the tailored needs of services within certain communities. Sinead is currently an active member of both the Employee Pharmacists Committee (EPC) and the Community Pharmacy Committee (CPC) in the IPU.

Frank Olden is a community pharmacy owner. He started his career as a pharmacist in pharmaceutical industry, community practice, and academia. Starting as a technical specialist at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Frank gained early exposure to Lean methodologies before moving into community pharmacy. Five years of locum work across Dublin highlighted the stark contrast between chaotic dispensaries and those that ran efficiently, sparking a lasting interest in operational excellence.

Driven by a commitment to clinical quality, Frank completed a Master’s in Clinical Pharmacy at University College Cork (UCC). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Frank worked in a role in establishing pharmacy departments at the Aviva, UCD, and Gorey mass vaccination centres, later serving as Chief Pharmacist for the two Cork Mass Vaccination Centres.

Currently, Frank combines clinical expertise with a passion for Lean principles and reducing “rework” in community pharmacy. The goal is to utilise operational frameworks that minimise waste in medication preparation, ultimately reclaiming time for meaningful patient consultation. Prior to owning his own pharmacy, Frank has held roles with Uniphar at Hickeys Pharmacy, Bakers Road, and spent three years as a Teacher Practitioner at the UCC School of Pharmacy.

Conall Ó Móráin is a business broadcaster, podcaster, and media commentator with a career spanning several decades in Irish media. He is the founder, producer, and host of “That Great Business Show,” a podcast that delves into the successes and insights of Irish businesses. This podcast was honoured as Ireland’s top business podcast by UCD Smurfit Business School. He is also producer of The Fifth Court legal podcast and of Transform Gov, a public sector digital transformation podcast. His company, The Media Group, is currently developing three other podcasts aimed at international audiences. Conall previously worked as a stockbroker with ABN AMRO (Ireland) for eight years, during which he was appointed a director of the firm. He twice won the Sunday Tribune national share tipping competition. Conall’s just lucky I guess! From 2005 to 2018, he presented the Sunday Business Show on Today FM, which became the station’s most-listened-to Sunday programme. Prior to this, he served as RTÉ’s first business correspondent, contributing to both television and radio. His media commentary extends to platforms such as RTÉ, Raidió na Gaeltachta, TG4, BBC Northern Ireland, and various national press outlets. He was, for many years, Chair of the Dublin-based Ireland International Business Network, a leading global Irish business network. He is also a founding member of the Ireland/Connecticut Business Council.

Diarmuid was a founding partner of a seven-GP training practice in Glanmire. He undertook specialist GP training in Kent, England before working in Australia. He was a member of MPS Clinical Risk Management & Education team 2009-2018. He won the ICGP ‘Quality-in-Practice” award in 2013 for a methotrexate safety initiative. He was a director of the HPRA from 2015-2024. He is a director of the charity, Diabetes in GP. He was awarded Fellowship of RCGP in 2015 and was Chair/Provost of RCGP ROI faculty from 2020-2024. He was ICGP-HSE Clinical Lead for T2DM 2018-2019. He was conferred a master’s in medical law & ethics (with merit, LLM) in Edinburgh University in 2018. He commenced an MD in UCC in 2024 focused on the safe use of isotretinoin in primary care. He accepted the role of Medical Director of the Irish College of GPs in 2020.

Larry has been a researcher for 35 years, and with B&A since 1997. He is a Director, former Shareholder and part of the ownership team at B&A which sold the business to IPSOS in November 2023.  He has recently led Ipsos B&A’s consolidation to a new site in Ballsbridge, where its’ expanded team of 85 is now based. He focusses on qualitative and quantitative Studies for clients across many sectors but with a specific interest in healthcare and on work with representative/members bodies (medical, legal etc.)  He served for four years on the Council of The Marketing Society (of Ireland), chaired its research committee, and has lectured on research at its seminars (as well as at UCD and TCD).  He managed B&A’s previous global network affiliation from 1999 until 2023, serving as a global director of that network, Iris, for 10 years and leading multi-country health and wellbeing studies. He manages many projects in the area of health & wellbeing covering areas like artificial reproduction, women’s health, mental health, health insurance and use of private hospitals and clinics. Pharmacy has been an area of major interest, and he has undertaken projects for the IPU since 2006. He has worked with many leading Pharma and healthcare clients including Pfizer, Novartis, Lundbeck, Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi Aventis, and Novo Nordisk, typically focussed more on general public/patient rather than HCP. He has also worked with other medical representative bodies (for GPs, Pharmacists, vets etc) and for a range of medical insurers, the HSE, Department of Health and other health promotion agencies. Larry won the Marketing Society 2018 Grand Prix award for his work on the HPV vaccine ‘Rebuilding trust: Reversing Ireland’s HPV vaccination crisis’. The study focused on the dramatic collapse in HPV vaccination in 2015/2016 resulting from concerted global and local social media agitation, which threatened to undermine the entire programme. He won the Grand Prix award again in 2019 for his work with Energia ‘From challenger to Contender’. In 2021 he won a Covid-19 prize from the Marketing Society for work on behalf of the National Concert Hall to successful develop a post-pandemic strategy (with research among concert goers, promoters and others both locally and internationally.) 

Noel Winters is Corporate Finance Partner in Fitzgerald Power. He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and has a comprehensive knowledge of the issues that matter to community pharmacy business owners. With over 20 years’ experience, Noel has advised on a wide range of matters including turnover stabilisation and growth, profit performance and cashflow maintenance and contributes regularly to pharmacy sector publications and thought pieces. Having advised on numerous acquisitions and disposal cases, Noel has particular expertise in business valuations, finance raising and strategic investment appraisal. As a business operator, he has a deep understanding of the importance of timely and accurate management reporting and focuses on providing this to business owners. Corporate bios aside, Noel’s real passion is the GAA, and after hanging up the boots he enjoys passing his words of wisdom on to the next generation.