An interview with Prof Orla Hardiman

Innovation in Healthcare Podcast

“MS has gone from being a disease where we could do very little except use steroids in the context of a relapse and hope that the relapse would get better, to really effective disease-modifying therapies, at least for the relapsing remitting form of the disease. So even in the space of my professional lifetime, we've seen a disease that was really very frightening for people and associated with a lot of uncertainty and the likelihood of a lot of disability, to a condition where people live their lives really well, with minimal disability because the treatments are so good now. So, you know, I think that's been a really exciting part of my career as well, to look at diseases where this has really been happening and being able to be part of that story and then working in diseases where we know that could happen if we work hard enough to do it.” – Prof Orla Hardiman

In this episode we interview Prof Orla Hardiman, one of Ireland's leading researchers in neurodegenerative diseases whose ground-breaking work is renowned internationally in the field of motor neurone disease.

Orla is Professor of Neurology at Trinity College Dublin and head of the Academic Unit of Neurology housed in Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, as well as a practicing Consultant Neurologist in Beaumont Hospital Dublin. Having just completed her term as HSE Clinical Lead in Neurology, Orla now has almost 460 peer-reviewed papers to her name and has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards over the years.

In this podcast, she discusses what attracted her to neurology, details her many firsts in clinical practice, research, and healthcare advocacy, and reveals why she has no plans to take it easy anytime soon.