With this appointment, Vidal Alaball becomes the second Professor of Family and Community Medicine in Catalonia, an uncommon achievement for a discipline with historically limited presence in university and research settings.
Currently, Vidal leads the Research and Innovation Unit in Primary Care of Central Catalonia (ICS-IDIAP Jordi Gol) and the research group Intelligence for Primary Care (I4PC). Through these roles, he drives projects on digital health, telemedicine, artificial intelligence in healthcare, and rural healthcare, while continuing to practice as a primary care physician at ICS.
A graduate in Medicine from the University of Barcelona, Vidal specialized in the United Kingdom. He later completed a Master's in Public Health at Cardiff University. Since 2007, he has worked as a family doctor at ICS, balancing clinical and management duties. In 2018, he earned his doctorate from UVic-UCC with a thesis on asynchronous telemedicine, and since 2020, he has been a professor at the Faculty of Medicine.
“"The fact that Family and Community Medicine can sustain a complete academic trajectory up to the professorship confirms that it possesses its own body of knowledge and sufficient solidity to occupy its rightful place in the university."
Vidal believes his appointment is an opportunity to facilitate a less obstructed academic career path for future primary care professionals. He has advocated for the transversal integration of primary care in medical student training, coordinating a sixth-year course at UVic-UCC focused on the biological, psychological, social, and cultural approach to the patient.
Training good doctors requires students to know and value primary care from the very beginning.
