Team size: Six –  (Miriam Caley (Head of legal, optum Ireland), Siun Rogers, Aoife Murphy, Shamil Chotai, Declan Sweeney and a US expat Audra Kolokithas) and an executive assistant (Mary Kenny)

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Standard work by the team concerns commercial contracts, privacy, corporate governance, real estate, intellectual property, pensions, and health and safety. Across some key recent projects, we have acted as local support for UHG’s acquisitions strategy (e.g., Optum’s recent acquisition of Change Healthcare) and advised on the draft EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Optum UK successfully registered its first and second medical devices which required significant legal support and change in quality management systems. Finally, supporting the NHS was critical to the UK business and a key consideration concerned the adequate protection of intellectual property rights on changing products.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

The team’s workload has increased due to our remit expanding and we are managing it while navigating a new hybrid model. Initially our role served to provide legal support only to Optum Ireland, but this expanded to the Optum UK operation and the Optum International Employee Assistance Program spanning from Brazil to Australia. Local business growth and acquisitions work have also contributed to this increased workload.

In order to adapt, the team has continuously applied the principles learned through the organisation’s Operational Excellence program, enabling the streamlining of work and the ongoing cross-training of team members outside of usual areas of responsibility.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

At an enterprise level, UnitedHealth Group has pledged to set a science-based target through SBTi, significantly reduce paper consumption, and operate at net zero emissions by 2035. This is in partnership with the National Academy of Medicine’s Climate Collaborative.

On a local level, there is an Optum Ireland and UK Green Team which arranges knowledge sharing sessions for all employees on personal green initiatives like growing vegetables, food waste, composting, and bee keeping. The Green Team works closely with our Real Estate Team to implement practical changes onsite like growing a wildflower meadow at our Letterkenny site, reducing site energy consumption, and offering enhanced recycling systems.

There has been a 45% reduction in the number of printers on site. In line with this, our own team has gone ‘paperless’ as much as possible and have transitioned our work to a document management system.