Group information

In 1992, the REUNI Project (Network of Research Units of the National Health System) was created with the aim of establishing a strategy for organising resources in the NHS. With the creation of the REUNI network, the Hospital Clínico San Carlos accredited its Research Methodological Support Unit in 1994, with resources from the Preventive Medicine Department.

Since then, the Preventive Medicine research group has worked to provide clinical researchers with technical support in statistics, research methodology and epidemiology, both in experimental and observational research, to hospital staff as well as continuous training in clinical epidemiology and statistics that has allowed specialisation in these areas and the development of its own lines such as the evaluation of technologies (hospital hygiene and environmental microbiology focused on hospital infection control, highlighting the efficacy studies of detergents, disinfectants, and sterilants, nuclear medicine, radiodiagnosis, and interventional cardiology), population epidemiology studies (prevalence studies of cardiovascular risk factors, morbimortality of newborns weighing less than 1.500 g, food allergy, population case-control), and mathematical modelling for epidemiological patterns (application of time series analysis in infection, stroke, emergencies, etc., conditional models in interventional cardiology, and steroid profile in athletes). Experimental research has been a priority over the years, and the design and execution of clinical trials, mainly sponsored by the hospital, have been improved by developing tools to enhance the quality of our clinical trials.

In 2019, a merger with the Sport and Occupational Health groups took place, integrating us into an Epidemiology and Health line.

The Occupational Risk Prevention Department of the HCSC was set up in 1999 and is named in the Agreement for the Constitution of the Prevention Services, Reference Service and Territorial Service for the Community of Madrid.

Since its inception, and from the perspective of the prevention of biological risks in healthcare personnel, this Department has been involved in research into adult vaccination lines, vaccinations of special relevance for healthcare personnel and other work groups, and the development of new vaccines. Also, within our framework of occupational risk prevention, in recent years we have incorporated research into the prevention of psychosocial risks.