Clinical trials in primary care, increase the volume of research to continue leading in Europe

2023-09-28 07:35:06

Updated Thursday, September 28, 2023 – 07:35

Promoting research at the first level of care helps our country gain ground in this area in the old continent.

In primary care there is a clear opportunity to recruit a high number of patients.SHUTTERSTOCK

Only 6.3% of the clinical trials carried out in Spain have the participation of Family and Community Doctors. Many or few? Depending on the perspective from which you look at it, trying to make the workload of these health professionals seem like an already important number. Or, it is a figure that can be increased since it represents an attractive space to explore.

From the employers’ association of laboratories in our country, Farmaindustria, they are committed to the opportunities that this new space represents. “We have more than 3,000 health centers in which some 50,000 health professionals work. Compared to that we have 832 hospitals. We have to take advantage of this opportunity,” argues the director of Relations with the Autonomous Communities of the employer’s association, José Ramón Luis-Yage.

The challenge is not new. It has been more than nine months since the first steps were taken. The associate director of Clinical and Translational Research at Farmaindustria, Amelia Martín Uranga, explains that “they are working in a mixed group made up of representatives of the pharmaceutical industry and the three primary care scientific societies of foundations and research institutes and of the administration of five autonomous communities and eight pharmaceutical companies”. Thus, specifically the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians (Semergen) and the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (Semfyc) have joined the project.

Over the course of about five meetings, “a participatory methodology has been established with the idea of ​​presenting this as an opportunity for the country,” says Martín. For the director of Clinical and Translational Research, this is an opportunity for doctors at the first level of care. “It is interesting for professionals in this area; that the centers be provided with resources so that they can carry out research and achieve good coordination with the health authorities.” And far from seeing the negative aspects, she emphasizes that “this can be a stimulus to retain talent in primary care, not as you said, since it is currently experiencing a delicate situation.”

The idea is that involving primary care is a way to extend Spanish excellence in clinical trials. This project makes it easier to bring the clinical trial closer to the patient in a context of proximity to their doctor. In this way, “the necessary decentralization of clinical research can be responded to, with the possibility of providing greater equity of access to all patients, regardless of where they reside,” says Martín.

It will be useful in certain diseases that are treated in outpatient clinics. Among others, the key pathologies are cardiovascular, inflammatory or respiratory. In primary care, all these ailments are diagnosed and treated early and with a large number of patients, which can facilitate their recruitment for clinical trials in these therapeutic areas. This project is of great interest in phase 3 clinical trials, the last one before putting a drug on the market, where thousands of patients are needed and a good number of centers participate.

In addition, recruiting primary schools to research offers the opportunity to increase the performance of cooperative trials between levels of care, coordinated between health centers and hospitals, in areas such as rheumatology, oncology or endocrinology, among others.

In Spain, so far this year, 573 have already been approved in total. “We hope to reach almost a thousand as in previous years by the end of the year,” emphasizes Martín. In 2021, it reached 997 and last year, 924. It was in 2020 when the thousand barrier was broken and 1,019 were reached, an important quantitative leap, since in 2018 and 2019, 800 and 833 were registered, respectively. .