Smart D8 and MoveAhead Win National Award For Citizen-Led Health Innovation
Smart D8, in collaboration with MoveAhead, were nationally recognised as overall Citizen Engagement winner at the Ireland eGovernment Awards 2025.
Led by Jamie McGann and Johann Issartel, MoveAhead is the world’s first AI-powered and movement analytics platform built specifically for children. One of four Smart D8 pilots from 2023 and an ADAPT-DCU spin-out, MoveAhead brought its movement-based app and games to schools and after-schools in the Dublin 8 community to co-design a “Smart Moves” curriculum, to tackle the sedentary crisis in childhood in the digital age. Through the Smart D8 pilot, MoveAhead’s community outreach was able to engage a range of local schools and after schools partnerships in Dublin 8 such as The Liberties Community Project (TLCP — formerly SICCDA; South Inner City Community Development Association) to co-design and deliver a movement curriculum for children’s motor skills. In doing so, MoveAhead identified an underutilised space for engaging with citizens to achieve health and social impacts outside of traditional healthcare settings, it equipped teachers and carers with the tools to measure childhood movement, and it empowered over 500 children and their families to co-develop their own movement curriculum which led to measurable improvement in their movement skills to improve their health and wellbeing.
From Digital Inclusion to Scalable Success: Lessons from the Smart D8 Programme
Findings and teacher feedback demonstrated that consistent delivery of the physical literacy programme can drive lasting improvements in children’s motor skills. In terms of health, it delivered measurable improvements in children’s motor competence and boosted confidence in physical activity. The programme advanced equity by reaching underserved communities through Smart D8, The Digital Hub pilot champion, and trusted local partners such as The Liberties Community Project. It promoted digital inclusion with GDPR- and KidSafe-compliant tools that encouraged active, not passive, screen use — with raw data of movement anonymised by default; setting a new precedent for responsible data management. The project also proved highly scalable, continuing to grow through subsequent partnerships and stakeholders in the education sector: https://libertiesdublin.ie/d8-kids-moving-ahead
The awards ceremony took place on Thursday 18th September at UCD O’Reilly Hall, Belfield. The guest of honour at the Awards ceremony was Minister Jack Chambers TD, Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Services, Reform and Digitalisation, who joined on behalf of An Taoiseach.
Learn more about this work here: MoveAhead – Smart D8