The Minister of Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, visited the Carlos III Health Institute yesterday to present the diplomas to the first five health research institutes accredited by the institution. In her speech, the minister highlighted the importance of biomedical R&D as a milestone of modernization, as well as the evolution experienced in the last three decades in this field.

According to Garmendia, "a few years ago only a few hospitals were concerned about innovating to increase the quality of life, but we have made an important qualitative leap and have made translational research in this area a political priority, which has allowed us to become the tenth most important research center in the world and the seventh in the European Union". In this context, "in which healthcare occupies a prominent place in R&D funding, the Carlos III Institute of Health was called to form part of the Ministry of Science, because we consider that it was the best way to provide translational and multidisciplinary work, involving primary care centers and hospitals, as well as centers that provide socio-health and mental health care".

The challenge in these areas, for Garmendia, lies in "improving the application of research in the clinics, involving universities, private healthcare and companies to this end, as well as ensuring more productive cooperation between the central administration and the autonomous communities in order to achieve a better understanding of the role of research in the health care system".

Acknowledgements

The Minister was joined at the ceremony by the Director of the Carlos III Institute of Health, José Navas, the Secretary of State for Research, Carlos Martínez Alonso, and the Ministers of Health of Catalonia, Marina Geli, and Andalusia, María Jesús Montero, as representatives of the autonomous regions in which the institutes recognized with Carlos III accreditation carry out their research.

The Catalan centers honored were the Augusto Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute of Barcelona (Idibaps) and the Vall d'Hebron, German Trías i Pujol and Bellvitge hospitals, while the Andalusian institution honored was the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville.

Geli did not hide his pride and satisfaction for the diplomas received by the four centers of his autonomous community, "the result of the work of many people", and he pointed out that the consultations are the place where R&D should be promoted to a greater extent, "since the questions arise in most cases from the patients' beds". He also stressed the need to promote the achievement of patents to change the development model, a statement in which he agreed with Montero, for whom "Andalusia has a lot of knowledge to contribute due to our extensive experience in the advancement of biomedical innovation and the strong commitment we have made over the years to R&D, which has been rewarded today".

Resources for 2009

Before awarding the diplomas to the centers accredited by the Carlos III Institute of Health, Cristina Garmendia, Minister of Science and Innovation, gave a conference on the new initiatives to promote clinical research in Spain, in which she stressed the importance of promoting translational work to increase the quality of care and patient safety, and recalled the funds the sector will have available this year to optimize its work: "The Carlos III has 325 million euros in 2009, to which we have added an additional 44.8 million. Its activity is included in the Strategic Health Action and joins the investments made to participate in the International Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (30 million euros), the Ultrasequencing Platform (15 million) and the International Cancer Consortium (10 million), with which we will increase our international presence".