Researcher Guadalupe Sabio and ALS patients, ABC Salud 2024 awards

The jury was chaired by the former Minister of Health, Ana Pastor, and by the president of the Collegiate Medical Organization, Tomás Cobo; the psychiatrist and academic Celso Arango; Javier Urzay, general deputy director. from Farmaindustria; Rosario Perona, head of the Support Unit for the General Directorate of the Carlos III Health Institute; Pablo Crespo, general secretary of Fenin and the editor-in-chief of ABC Society, Nuria Ramírez de Castro.

These are the winners of the fourteenth edition of the ABC Salud awards, sponsored by Asisa and with the collaboration of Anefp and UCAV, as an academic partner. The awards will be presented at ABC headquarters this October 23:

Developed by the University of Granada, UGRSKIN is the first human artificial skin developed in Spain for the treatment of large burns. The Spanish Medicines Agency has recently approved its use as an advanced therapy drug after years of basic research. This type of graft is performed in patients who have between 60 and 90% of their body surface burned and who do not have their own skin to cover the damaged parts with their own grafts. It is a skin that is created from a small sample taken from the patient themselves and that provides stable coverage to patients who without it would have no other option to survive. UGRSKIN is saving lives.

Promoted by the Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona, ​​this technological initiative allows children with complex chronic diseases to be remotely monitored in real time without them having to leave their home. This is a pioneering project in Spain based on collaboration between the hospital, families of chronic patients and healthcare teams. The idea is to “move the data, not the patients,” as its promoters highlight. Clinical Command Center can identify any suspected complications to provide prompt care after hospital discharge.

Families only have to provide some patient information on a daily basis. The data is analyzed from the Clinical Command Center to see if the child is stable. In the event of a complication, it is decided whether extraordinary measures must be activated or treatment at home is sufficient.

The project of the Salamanca University Care Complex, with a central role of specialist nurses, has made it possible to bring the complex CAR-T cell therapy to the homes of cancer patients. This treatment is currently the therapeutic option with the greatest curative capacity in leukemias and lymphomas, but requires careful planning and complex monitoring to guarantee success. The treatment is long and affects vulnerable people. The Salamanca hospital project has made it possible to reduce visits by patients to the hospital, thanks to the care and monitoring of patients at home by the nursing group.

«If you don’t have it, Farmahelp will find it«. The motto presented by the digital tool of the General Council of Pharmacists allows the pharmacist to contact the pharmacies in their area when a patient needs a medication in case of a shortage. In the last twelve months, the application has doubled the number of participating pharmacies and now exceeds 10,000 with great results. On 7 out of 10 occasions the pharmacist was able to provide a solution to the patient, helping them locate a pharmacy in the area that had the medication.

The free application maintains patient privacy and guarantees the continuity of patient treatments

The jury has awarded the trajectory of the major burn unit at the Getafe Hospital in Madrid, for being a national and European reference in the treatment of critically ill adult patients. The unit is made up of plastic surgeons, intensive care doctors, psychiatrists/psychologists, rehabilitators and physiotherapists, as well as nursing professionals with extensive experience in this field. It also has the close collaboration of ophthalmologists, dermatologists, anesthetists, as well as members of the tissue bank.

In more than 30 years of operation it has treated more than 2,000 critical burns referred from all over the country. It is worth highlighting the commitment of the professionals who have been protagonists in situations of major catastrophes such as the terrorist attack of March 11, 2004 in Madrid, the accident at the Repsol refinery in Puertollano (Ciudad Real) in August 2003 or the Bent accident. Bayah in Libya in 2022.

The excellence of a center that has been a center of excellence in ophthalmology for 135 years and five generations is recognized. The Fernández-Vega Ophthalmological Institute is a national and international benchmark. It has two headquarters: a hospital in Oviedo and a clinic in Madrid, dedicated to addressing ocular diseases from the clinic, research and teaching. It has powerful lines of clinical research in cornea and lens, which keep the institute at the forefront of world ophthalmology and has crystallized, among others, in the development of an intercorneal implant that is also manufactured in Spain. Likewise, research is being carried out on the behavior of intraocular lenses used in cataract or retinal surgery, where between 15 and 20 annual clinical trials remain active that have contributed to the development of the best medications for age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. and retinal thrombosis.

It provides temporary and free accommodation to relatives of patients admitted to the ICU and neonatal units of public hospitals in Madrid, displaced from other communities that do not have the possibility of accommodation. Casa Avintia is part of the plan to humanize healthcare in the Autonomous Community of Madrid. Those responsible for the Avintia Foundation considered finding a solution during an intervention with another entity at the La Paz Hospital. “They explained the problem to us, we went down to the parking lot and we were amazed: there were people with camping gas, with computers… they lived there,” explains Carmen Varela, director of the foundation. They slept in the hospital hall, in the ICU waiting rooms, or in the emergency rooms when they were kicked out first. In their first year they have already served more than a hundred families.

The ABC Salud awards distinguish the work of all agents participating in the health system: doctors, researchers, pharmacists, nurses or the pharmaceutical and health technology industry. But in this latest edition, the publication has incorporated a new category for that personality who, without being a health professional, has contributed to making an illness or health problem visible. Outside of the jury’s vote, ABC has awarded this distinction to former soccer player Juan Carlos Unzué and activist Jordi Sabaté for their fight to obtain an ALS law that improves the care of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. They are not the only ones who have fought to achieve this law that is about to be approved in Congress, but they are the visible face of many patients.