Medical Oncology finally achieves departmental status

It all began in 1996 when the hospital management decided that oncology should become a priority area due to the disease’s epidemiology: the progressive ageing of the population was favouring the emergence of different types of cancer.

January 1996

With this objective in mind, all the departments most closely related to cancer were strengthened, including Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Haematology and Paediatric Oncology. All the other services involved in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, such as Radiology, Pathological Anatomy, surgical specialities and the Nursing Department, were also strengthened around these departments.
 
Until then, Oncology had been a unit within the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. In the 1970s, Dr Luis Alfonso Solé and Dr Diego Rubio, two internists from Hospital Clínic, promoted it.
 
This unit did not become a department of the hospital until 1996, when Dr Josep Baselga was appointed as coordinator of the areas of Medical Oncology, Haematology and Radiotherapy. At that time, he was working at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. The arrival in 1997 of Dr Josep Tabernero, currently Head of the Medical Oncology Department, together with other experienced physicians who already had a strong background within the hospital, such as Dr Enriqueta Felip and Dr Josep Maria del Campo, made it possible to begin consolidating the department by creating sections based on pathology.
 
One of the strategic decisions taken by Dr Josep Baselga was to develop a programme to achieve clinical excellence in patient diagnosis and treatment, build a competitive research programme focused on patients and their needs (what we now call translational research), and conduct strong clinical research involving innovative drugs. 
 
This commitment to excellence has, in recent years, led to the receipt of the most prestigious awards in the field of medical oncology.

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