FUNDACION AVEDIS DONABEDIAN PARA LA MEJORA DE LA CALIDAD ASISTENCIAL

Their core work

FAD is a Barcelona-based foundation dedicated to improving healthcare quality and patient safety, named after the pioneer of quality assessment in medicine, Avedis Donabedian. They specialize in evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of clinical interventions — particularly self-management strategies for chronic diseases — using rigorous methods like network meta-analysis. Their work bridges the gap between clinical evidence and patient-facing decision-making tools, helping healthcare systems adopt interventions that actually improve outcomes. They also contribute to building patient safety research capacity across European institutions.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

FAD's early H2020 work (2016) centered on patient empowerment, treatment adherence, and chronic disease management at the individual patient level, including pre-commercial procurement approaches (EMPATTICS). By 2018-2019, their focus shifted toward systematic evidence synthesis — using network meta-analysis to compare interventions at scale (COMPAR-EU) — and toward institution-building for patient safety research across Europe (PATSAFE). The trajectory shows a clear move from direct patient-level interventions to system-level evidence generation and research capacity building.

FAD is moving from studying individual patient behaviors toward producing comparative evidence that informs healthcare policy and building research infrastructure across borders.

How they like to work

FAD balances leading and contributing — they coordinated COMPAR-EU (their largest project at EUR 1.35M) while participating in two others, showing they can manage large consortia and also plug into existing teams. With 20 unique partners across 11 countries from just 3 projects, they build broad European networks rather than relying on a small circle of repeat collaborators. Their consortium-building approach favors multi-country, multi-institution partnerships typical of health services research.

FAD has collaborated with 20 distinct partners across 11 countries in just 3 projects, indicating a broad and well-connected European network. Their partnerships span from Western European health research centers to institutions in newer EU member states like Estonia.

What sets them apart

FAD carries the legacy and methodological rigor of Avedis Donabedian's quality-of-care framework, giving them distinctive credibility in healthcare quality assessment. Unlike clinical research groups that focus on specific diseases, FAD works across chronic conditions to compare what actually works for patients — a meta-level expertise that is rare among SME-sized foundations. Their combination of systematic review capability, patient safety expertise, and proven ability to coordinate large EU consortia makes them an unusually capable partner for health systems research projects.

Highlights from their portfolio

• COMPAR-EU
  Their flagship as coordinator (EUR 1.35M) — a large-scale comparison of self-management interventions across 4 chronic diseases using network meta-analysis, rare in scope and ambition.
• PATSAFE
  A Widening Participation project building patient safety research capacity in Estonia — shows FAD's role in transferring quality-of-care expertise to newer EU research ecosystems.