Financing for a Germans Trias i Pujol project in the third edition of the PERIS call

The Ministry of Health presented the grants for the 2018 and 2019 calls of the Strategic Plan for Innovation in Health (PERIS) on Tuesday. In this year's round the Germans Trias neurologist Natalia Pérez de la Ossa received a grant for the project for pre-hospitalization healthcare for patients with acute stroke. The doctor Daniel Fuster was also awarded a grant for the second edition, which he received at the same ceremony.

Both projects are in the category of Professional Intensification and Specialist Health Training. This programme permits health professionals to reduce their contact healthcare hours to dedicate time to research with the provision for contracting substitutes to cover them.

Dr Fuster is a specialist in internal medicine and his project has been chosen within the second edition of PERIS. It focusses on the study of the effects of alcohol consumption and other drugs on intestinal permeability, systemic inflammation, oxidative stress and cardiovascular health. To carry this out he is leading a prospective study in a cohort of patients with alcohol use disorder in two centres: the Germans Trias Hospital on the Can Ruti Campus and in the Bellvitge Hospital in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Additionally, Dr Pérez de la Ossa's project starts this year. The objective is to focus on organizing healthcare for patients with severe stroke before admission to hospital and their access to endovascular treatment.  This intensification will permit Dr Pérez de la Ossa to continue her work on several projects on pre-admission care of patients, which are in currently in the initial phases, or on those in development, such as a project to optimize pre-admission triage based on the RACE scale and development of telemedicine systems for use before admission and providing rapid communication between health professionals.

Presentation Ceremony

An ample representation of all the stakeholders involved in the area of Catalan Healthcare came together on Tuesday 25 June for the presentation of the awards for the calls from 2018 and 2019. 207 applications were received in the third call for grants for research for 2019-2020. Almost 30 independent experts carried out the evaluations, coordinated by the Catalan Quality and Health Evaluation Agency (AQuAS). The final resolution, in line with the established criteria for excellence, awarded 66 grants.

The budget for the third call is of 8.1 million euros. Each euro invested in research represents a return of three euros in social and economic terms. The second edition, which awarded more than 100 projects, had a budget of 8.6 million euros.