SemFYC and Farmaindustria collaborate to promote clinical trials in Primary Care
A hundred members of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine and pharmaceutical companies attend a training session to learn about the opportunities offered to patients by clinical research with drugs in this area of care.
Spain has become an international leader in this field in recent years and the more than 13,000 primary care centres in the country offer great potential for improvement, as they only participate in 8% of clinical trials at national level.
Farmaindustria.es
In biomedical research, primary care (PC) is one of the areas with the greatest potential for progress in Spain, which in recent years has become an international leader in clinical trials. This primary care setting is where 80% of patients’ health problems are treated and has a network of more than 13,000 centres – 3,000 health centres and 10,000 local clinics – in Spain. However, according to the latest data from Farmaindustria, only 8% of clinical trials with medicines in Spain involve at least one health centre.
Aware of the importance of promoting clinical research in Primary Care, the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (SemFYC) and Farmaindustria have organised a training session to analyse aspects related to clinical drug trials in PC. The meeting was moderated by Ignacio Párraga, member of SemFYC’s Research Department.
The meeting, which was attended by nearly a hundred participants, was attended by members of both the scientific society and the industry, and addressed both the challenges and the challenges offered by this approach: from proximity and transversality to opportunities, led by Juan Antonio López, SemFYC’s Training spokesperson.
Jesús González, coordinator of the SemFYC’s clinical trials area, also spoke about the society’s clinical trials network, which includes a database of interested researchers, the classification of potentially interested centres and collaboration between clinical trial promoters and research centres. This network, which is the result of the scientific society’s involvement, already has more than 200 physicians, to encourage and promote research with clinical trials, and the organisation considers it crucial to promote good clinical practices in this field.
On behalf of Farmaindustria, the directors of Research, Amelia Martín, and Medical-Scientific Affairs, Arantxa Sancho, have explained and delved into the Guide of recommendations of good practices for the promotion of clinical research in Primary Care that the association launched last year with the aim of bringing new treatment opportunities to patients in health centres, as well as its action plan for this year, in which it is working with different entities for proper implementation.
“As semFYC we firmly believe that it is important to emphasise that research in clinical trials is also about generating knowledge and the important thing is to do so with the utmost rigour and the appropriate methodology for each type of research. Unfortunately, we have found that today there is still a lack of research culture in clinical trials in Primary Care and it is very important at this time to generate confidence for all doctors and family doctors; it is essential to raise awareness of what research with medicines consists of and to disseminate, above all, what the benefits are and how it provides knowledge,” says Remedios Martín, president of SemFYC.
“Spain’s leadership in clinical research at the hospital level is not reflected at the level of health centres, which only participate in 8% of the studies. Therefore, bringing these trials to primary care is a new opportunity for patients, facilitates equity and improves the quality of these studies, especially in diseases treated at this level of care and at earlier stages,” explains Juan Yermo, director general of Farmaindustria.
Promoting clinical trials in primary care is one of the objectives of Farmaindustria, which in recent months has taken this guide to various autonomous communities, such as Andalusia and Castilla León. More than 50 professionals representing all the autonomous communities, PC scientific societies, patient organisations and organisations and the pharmaceutical industry were involved in the preparation of the guide, in which Semfyc participated. It reflects the strengths, weaknesses, barriers and opportunities identified to promote clinical research in primary care and at the same time includes a series of strategic recommendations to help the different public and private agents in the field.
