
A new database provides valuable information in the prediction of sudden death and atrial fibrillation
16 December, 2024Aid for contracts Juan de la Cierva 2024
18 December, 2024El Periódico de Aragón interviews Ángel Lanas, scientific director of the Aragón Health Research Institute, to talk about the Institute's 10-year history
Ten years of experience, challenges and also achievements. These are the years that have passed since the formation of the Health Research Institute of Aragon (IIS Aragon), which is made up of the Clínico hospital and the Miguel Servet, Primary Health Care, and associated with the Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences (IACS) and the University of Zaragoza (Unizar). Your director, Angel Lanas, travel back to the creation of the institute to remember its history.
Lanas explains that health research institutes are created with the aim of having the different groups in hospitals work cooperatively and thus promote hospital research and increase the quality of care. Thus, for each hospital an institute is created with a university associated with it.The Hospital Clínico de Barcelona has its own institute; the Vall d'Hebron has its own, etc.," he explains.
In Zaragoza, things are different. “We didn’t have the capacity to create an institute for each hospital. So we came up with a way to unite the Servet and the Clínico into a single institute, which is obligatorily linked to the IACS and Unizar,” Lanas says.
The beginnings were difficult. “We had to work hard until we established ourselves and proved that we were a useful entity,” he says. And this usefulness must be proven every five years. This is why, after receiving their first accreditation in 2015 and updating it in 2020, they will have to renew it again next year. "We have to prove that we are good. That forces us not to rest on our laurels," he says.
Ten years of work have allowed the IIS Aragón to achieve several milestones. Lanas recalls, among others, the incorporation of what he defines as "an extraordinary capacity and power of science that existed in the Aragon environment": the Engineering Schools. "We put engineers in the hospitals collaborating with the clinical groups," he says.
The director says that the IIS Aragón "has been the meeting point for researchers and companies in the biomedical field in Aragon." "Thanks to the IIS, Aragon will not be left behind," he says.
Lanas explains that the IIS Aragón is now "well established, well recognized and growing." Some of its challenges are "to penetrate further into the regional business fabric," continue to delve into internationalisation and ensure that “hospitals have clinical researchers”, that is, doctors who have as much time in care as in research and that both parties are recognised.
Main picture: Angel Lanas, in the laboratory. / ANDREEA VORNICU
Complete news: The newspaper of Aragon