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Fundación Salud, Innovación y Sociedad "Contribuimos a la formación de opinión independiente" |
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Portada 
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| Dr. A. Aynsley Green Director R&D at the Great Ormond Street Hospital Trust & Institute of Child Health. |
How did you become involved in Biomedical Investigation and what did you want this conference to bring about?
I have the privilege to hold the senior chair of Paediatric centre area of the UK. I came to it from training in London then in Oxford and Zurich in Switzerland. I was professor of Child Health in New Castle for ten years. I came to London seven years ago. About this conference, I think principles are common but Spain has really different health problems and different culture so it is not for me to say what Spain should do. All I would like to have achieved by doing my speech today is to have challenged people's ideas and encourage them to be challenging themselves.
After you arrived at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, you have had to introduce changes in the organisation so as to avoid the Hospital cost sinking. Where did you concretely take ideas for reforming the organisation and how did you adapt management to caring and solidarity aspect of health?
First thing is that whatever change we achieved can not be only due to me. There is teamwork. It is about bringing power of many intelligent and motivated people. I have used the experience from being an academic leader for more than twenty years and from being really interested in how the organisations work and trying to understand the principle of strategies. Reorganising hospital research is all about management. If you talk to people, to the Pharmaceutical Industry, to companies of being successful, they will be used to these principles: strategies of Human resources, trainings, evaluation, and cost-effectiveness. It should be possible for any researcher to combine research, management and even leadership position even though it is difficult. I work extremely hard, seven days per week. I want to have my personal research program, I have research people that report to me, I manage quite well diseases that send me all over the world, engaged in teaching, engaged in politics nationally. The key is to use time effectively.
How do you select fields of investigation? Is it nationally decided?
Yes, there is a national context and the Health for Children currently is not one of the government priorities. We are now trying very hard to change that politically, arguing that adult's diseases begin at childhood and if we can prevent these diseases, then it must be cost effective. We have to convince the government that children should be a high priority. It is also important to say that the government does listen because I sit for two years now in one of the most important committees and I reflect the needs of mothers and child. That's the way we can administratively do this research. However, we have to recognise what the government has said that is important like cancer and hart diseases. There is a context for co-operating but it is also important for people themselves to have other maybe «crazy» ideas. Unusual people, «crazy» people, have done some of the most important advances in medicine. An organisation has to find the means of accommodating this kind of people too.
Research is usually subject to fruitful and less fruitful periods. The system thus would mean inequalities and vicious circles for hospitals research centres that do not succeed so quickly.
That is exactly right. 70% of the research budget comes to London for example. I think that what should drive the distribution is excellence and ability to deliver whilst at the same time we are making some money available to encourage other centres to deliver. That is a very difficult tension. Little centres should not exist. They should co-operate and it works. And once you have results, communication is key, inside the institution, between institutions, with government.
Who are the researchers of 2000s? Do you have a wave of new researchers following what you prescribe?
We have big problems in Academic Medicines across all the subjects in the UK. At the moment there are seventy-five chairs in important disciplines that cannot be filled. Part of this is because young people don't want the pressures. They want to have an easy life, time for their family. They see little immediate benefit or reward for being a higher academic. But we have to target the medical students before they are specialised and to motivate them with the excitement of medical sciences, with well-supervised, good science projects at PhD level. Then we will give them support to become independent investigators and finally to get them an exit, to be assigned as member of staff. We have just started to do this, the very first ten years trainee program for a young doctor. She has been appointed and will have three years through a PhD, she will have one year adjoined to Canada, one year on industry, all trainings for being competent. In addition, we will guarantee an exit for her, and I hope that in fifteen years, she will professor the discipline and leading it.
