The University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC) is one of the largest combined healthcare providers and insurers in the United States, providing patient-centred, cost-effective, accountable care.
UPMC has more than 90,000 employees, with some of them working in Ireland at its hospitals in Kildare, Waterford and Kilkenny, its outreach centres in Carlow, a sport medicine clinic in Waterford, and its cancer care centres in Waterford and Cork.
Last year it announced that it had chosen Ireland as the location for its global technology operations centre. The new centre will be located at MacDonagh Junction, in Kilkenny, in what was a former famine house, where it is expected to employ up to 60 skilled technology workers.
The new centre, which was supported by the IDA, gives UPMC a unique ability to accommodate regulatory, cultural and language requirements across all its international sites, which include Italy, Kazakhstan and China.
Strong talent pool
Ireland’s central location, strong talent pool and multi-cultural workforce, as well as its business-friendly environment, the significant presence of major tech companies and an active innovation community that supports tech start-ups and incubators all gave it the edge when the $23 billion (€19.2 billion) health care provider was assessing location of the facility.
Securing the site is a significant coup for Ireland, according to David Beirne, UPMC's managing director in Ireland. It also adds to what is a remarkable employment success story in a relatively short space of time for the not-for-profit organisation, which acts as a healthcare partner to Ireland's HSE. "From a standing start in May 2018, UPMC now has 760 people employed in Ireland," he said.
The group has grown its international footprint significantly in recent years, and now employs 2,500 people outside of the US, where it already has an IT department that employs more than 1000 people. For GDPR and data protection purposes, it required a global technology operations centre, he explains.
The pitch involved bringing members of UPMC’s senior team to Ireland, to meet a variety of professional services firms, multinationals and innovation agencies. Feedback from the visiting delegate spoke of their amazement at “just how vibrant and entrepreneurial Ireland is, and how strong on innovation and technology”, said Beirne.
Very few people think of a hospital as an innovation centre, he points out, but UPMC’s innovation has helped transform Pittsburgh from a sunset industry steel town into a city driven by innovation in “meds and eds”, or medicine and education.
“We hear a lot about technology, which is very broad, and innovation, which is very vague. But when you can direct technology and innovation to a specific industry that needs it, healthcare, that’s unique.”
