Contribute to accelerating the incorporation of scientific research into clinical practice. This was the objective that led Mário Santos and Ricardo Ladeiras Lopes, both cardiologists and professors, respectively, at the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, to create the Medical Portfolio, an application that brings together the most relevant articles in the area of cardiovascular medicine and heart failure.

The Medical Portfolio was launched around five months ago and already has around 2000 users. It is aimed at doctors who, due to the demanding pace of clinical activity, have difficulty keeping up to date with the rapid evolution of scientific evidence in the cardiovascular area.

For Mário Santos, this app constituted an opportunity to combat the delay in incorporating new evidence into clinical decisions. “One of the great problems of modern medicine is that clinical research has increased a lot, which translates into outputs of articles and information, but the time it takes for this clinical information to influence the doctor’s decisions regarding the patient is too long. With the Medical Portfolio we intend that relevant information, with an impact on clinical practice, reaches the clinical staff on a weekly basis”, says the ICBAS professor.

The problem with which the ‘knowledge-to-practice gap’ concerns is very relevant and may, even in some areas of medicine, “be several years”. With this application “very simple and non-invasive, we only seek to provide doctors with information that is important for their practice”, he continues.

Dozens of scientific journals are screened weekly, filtering the most relevant articles with an impact on medical practice. On Tuesday and Thursday, the user receives a notification with the three most important articles in the area of cardiovascular medicine and three in the area of heart failure.

The Medical Portfolio allows clinicians to access the most recent research in a quick and filtered way, thus constituting a very useful tool for medical practice and as well as for medical students.

For the future, “our objective is to add other medical areas where there is a lot of research helping a wider audience”, projects Mário Santos.