The partnership programme between the Portuguese State and Harvard Medical School will be issuing notices over the coming days for the presentation of candidatures.

This programme has been prepared over the last two years with all the Portuguese faculties of medicine and the laboratories associated to the area of health, in a partnership with the Harvard Medical School, and is being brought into material terms now with the opening of the following competitions: network clinical research and translation research projects involving Portuguese and Harvard research teams; clinical research projects to be carried out by doctors during the internship phase of their specialisation; projects for the development of new systems of medical information; socio-economical research projects on the impact of information systems on health.

With the executive director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), Maria do Carmo Fonseca, as one of the main promoters of the project, one may foresee major benefits for the Portuguese panorama of health sciences, such as the linking of clinical research to basic research on projects that are greatly internationalised, contribution towards the developing of clinical research in Portugal and the supporting of a major project of national coordination for divulging medical contents.

The programme arose after a request for partnership from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) to Harvard, after the efforts by the FCT to establish international scientific cooperation agreements with major universities of renown. In 2007, the Harvard Medical School and the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology signed a protocol to identify the cooperation potential. About 42 million Euros for the next six years is the overall budget for the project.

“This programme is an exceptional opportunity both for the IMM and for the Faculty of Medicine and the Santa Maria Hospital, and for this reason I strongly encourage all the researchers and clinicians at the Lisbon academic Medicine Centre to remain aware of the opportunities arising and I challenge them to consider possibilities of partnerships with Harvard teams”, explains Maria do Carmo Fonseca.

The competitions now open arise from three main structured lines of action. The first is a research programme to strengthen the capacity to produce, in Portugal, more scientific knowledge with potential clinical impact. The aim is to support innovative projects, orientated towards any area relevant human pathology. In this context there will be an annual opening of competitions to choose new projects, involving a total of over twenty-four Portuguese teams. The second is a programme to grant incentives to the development of clinical research programmes by about fourteen doctors in specialist internship. And the third is a programme to stimulate the production and publication of medical information for the public in general, and to distribute pedagogical materials to medicine students and professionals in the sector. In this context there will be the opening of annual competitions for the choosing of about fifteen new projects for the production and publication of medical information.

More information on www.hmsportugal.org.

Catarina Rebelo
IMM Unit of Communication and Training
anarebelo@fm.ul.pt