Madrid, December 3rd 2015.– Recognizing the efforts, dedication, talent and imagination used by patients’ associations to undertake their work during the year in order to offer assistance, services and solutions to their members and society. This is the spirit which led the ceremony of the first edition of the “Somos Pacientes” Awards, as was highlighted by Antoni Esteve, President of Farmaindustria, during his speech to introduce this ceremony.

These awards, convened by Farmaindustria  through the on-line community of Patients Associations and disabled people “Somos Pacientes”, aims to pull together the technology and innovation of this platform with the spirit of distinction of work well done and the generosity of the Associations that characterized these award nominees for the Best Initiative of Patient Service that Farmaindustria delivered between 2005 and 2011.

The Winners

Divided into two categories (Society and Patients), the winners of these awards were the following:

Patients’ Category. Best web development or application.- Ashua Bracelet, Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome Association (Ashua).

Patients’ Category. Best social media campaign.- I’m against stigma, too, Psychiatry and Life Association

Patients’ Category. Best patient service or social awareness campaign.- New births in epidermolysis bullosa, Butterfly Skin Association (Debra España).

Patients’ Category. Somos Pacientes users’ favorite initiative, chosen through on line voting system with 8,000 participants.- Hemiweb.org, Childhood hemi-paresis Association  (Hemiweb).

Civil Society Category.– ‘We put our heart in everything we do’, Torrejón’s University Hospital

Winners in the Patients Categories have been awarded with a commemorative prize and 3,000 € each. The prize in the Civil Society category is limited to the commemorative prize.

In total, Somos Pacientes received more than 150 candidates to compete in the first edition of these awards, which have generated a considerable expectation amongst the patients’ associations’ network and people with disabilities in Spain.

This 1st edition of the awards ceremony has served as the culmination to the III “Somos Pacientes” meeting, a discussion and debate forum which, in this occasion, tackled the educational and training needs of patients’ associations and disabled citizens, as well as the solution that said associations and other entities propose, with a special emphasis in the field of biomedical R&D.

More than 1,600 associations

The event took place at the Cómo Space in Madrid, before an audience of more than 120 people, most of them representatives of patients’ associations and disabled citizens, as well as of pharmaceutical companies and professional collectives, under the presidency of the Spanish Healthcare and Consumers Secretary General, Javier Castrodeza.

Somos Pacientes (www.somospacientes.com) is an initiative set up with the aim of generating an online community of patients associations and disabled citizens, which gathers together close to 1,600 groups, offering a shared space of information, participation, education, services and collaborative work to these associations.