Royal Decree 589/2022, July 19, which provides for “transverse training of specializations in Health Sciences, procedures and criteria for proposals for new specialist degrees in Health Sciences or diplomas in specialized training areas, and review of them established, and access to and training of specialized training areas; and the rules applicable to the annual test of access to training grounds in the Health Sciences specialization are established”, already published in BOE. Open the application process for a new specialization “by one or more national scientific associations, legally constituted in connection with the appropriate area of ​​specialization in Health Sciences, which accredit representatives of at least 70% of professionals in that field or by the National Human Resources Commission on Health Systems”.

This is the opportunity that professionals dedicated to clinical genetics have been waiting for as it rained in May to end the decade demanding Spain definitively cease to be the only European country without this particular official recognition.

I hope the process don’t end up with a new disappointment: Royal Decree 639/2014 on core subjects, which approved clinical genetics eight years ago, was overturned in 2016 by the Supreme Court due to a formal flaw. And in 2017 the Interregional Council of National Health Systems (CISNS) gave the go-ahead for the specialization to be approved by an independent decision and, since then, nothing.

In May last year, the president of the European Society for Human Genetics, Alexandre Reymond, sent it letter to the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, supports “the efforts of the Spanish clinical genetics community to establish specialization”. He reminded him that “not only does this specialty already exist in almost all European countries (adopted by 41 states, for example, Portugal, France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and Finland), but, under the auspices of the Directive European Commission (EC) Professional Qualifications and the efforts of our society, established pan-European recognition of such specialists.” And he told him that “at a time when genetics is ubiquitous in society and when an era of personalized medicine is emerging, it is important for one of the greatest European countries to accept this challenge of modernity.”

It’s a contrast that this specialty has not been recognized in our country with access to all types of genetic testing, consultation and counseling has been in the SNS service portfolio for many years and that the role of genetics is critical to the progress, already underway, of precision medicine.

The specialty of clinical genetics, although not recognized, exists and has grown and developed in every hospital and each has been able to, which very likely has contributed to generating unacceptable inequalities of access to essential services in cases of serious oncological, familial and rare pathology.

And we must remember that the Government owns IMPaCT, the Precision Medicine Infrastructure linked to Science and Technology, with three programs: Predictive Medicine, Data Science and Genomic medicine.

When the specialty is approved, hopefully, its national commission will be formed, which will set the requirements for obtaining an official degree, will evaluate the specialist’s needs and will determine the conditions for accreditation of teaching units. With this, from the very beginning, will begin to put some order (especially information) on the techniques used and will end the fact that everyone knows about genetics and can get involved and do what they consider in this matter.

Doubts arose about what recognition process will there be for professionals already dedicated to clinical genetics.

But step by step: first, legally recognize the specialization. And from there, moving steadily towards generalization of quality personal medicinesmore precise and efficient in the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of disease.