Rosa, can you summarize your professional career?

Well, in fact, I came from Primary Care, from the pharmacy assistance area, in the North Metropolitan Area. And what I did was advise medical professionals on medication-related matters until I joined IDIAP more fully with the opportunity to coordinate the clinical trials network, since 2009.

What is the function of the UEM?

Well, it has a part that is to develop all studies involving medications, especially clinical trials. We advise and help them develop within the SCReN network of the Carlos III Institute, and we also carry out other functions related to medications, not so focused on a specific disease, but on the use of medications under special conditions, adherence, pharmacovigilance… Although we can do other things, for example with health products, the core matter is medication.

How has your role in the UEM evolved or changed since you started?

It has changed in the sense that it has expanded, but in fact, the initial role I continue to maintain, which is that of clinical trials, from their management and planning to the final report. We remain highly involved here, but we have expanded the other part to other studies and our own studies and also to advising on medications because, in fact, our expertise is in medications.

What do you think your knowledge and experience contribute to the Institute?

I believe I do contribute knowledge, because this is a fairly unknown topic in Primary Care, especially the legal and mandatory aspects that these medication studies involve. Medication is highly regulated at the European level. We are under European legislation that must be followed, and this is what we also contribute to, to make it known and to help those who want to develop studies, advising them and seeing if they can be done or how we could make it easier. And this encompasses everything, from medication preparation to all legal requirements, reports, monitoring, and control in these studies. In fact, this is why the SCReN network of the Carlos III Institute was created, where all are hospital centers and we are the only unit exclusively in Primary Care.

What gives you the most satisfaction in your work at the UEM?

Learning with new things, with my projects; I like to always do different and new things, and for my team to enjoy it as well because it is the way to learn and have a better time. Therefore, the challenge is to train them. But I have little time to dedicate to it, that is the problem. Day-to-day work consumes you and you cannot dedicate yourself to improving projects, building them, or helping people improve.

And what is your role in the Ethics Committee?

We evaluate all projects carried out in Primary Care, and that gives a broad view of research, but it is also considerable work, because more and more the ethics committee is being loaded with legal aspects (data protection, more responsibilities with medication studies delegated by the Agency to committees, projects you have to oversee for all centers, not only yours…) I mean, there is increasing responsibility and projects are becoming more complex. But it provides an overview of all Primary Care and other supervised centers. Here we also oversee the Department of Health, and especially since COVID, we have been able to evaluate more projects from the institutional perspective.

I ask you the same again, but regarding the Ethics Committee. What is your contribution?

I have fairly extensive knowledge of other activities; in fact, I have always been at the university, I have also been closely linked to the Spanish Agency for Medicines, because I am on the Medicines Evaluation Committee, and I think all this external knowledge is what I contribute to IDIAPJGol. From Primary Care, it would be much harder to stay up to date on all these issues.