Nino Cartabellotta

Nino Cartabellotta was born in 1965 in Palermo, where he obtained a degree in Medicine and Surgery and specialisations in Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine.

In 1996, he founded the Italian Group for Evidence-Based Medicine (GIMBE), with the aim of promoting Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) in Italy. In 2010, he promoted the establishment of the GIMBE Foundation with the aim of improving people’s health and optimising the use of public funds, by integrating the best available evidence into all professional, managerial and health policy decisions.

An Italian pioneer of EBM, he is now recognised as one of the country’s most authoritative experts in research and healthcare, thanks to his cross-disciplinary expertise spanning all levels of the healthcare system: from research methodology to evidence-based healthcare, from clinical governance to the evaluation of healthcare performance, from the planning and organisation of healthcare services to the development of human capital in healthcare, from management to health policies, from continuing professional development to the assessment of professional competence, from the management of conflicts of interest to strategies for the active involvement of citizens and patients.

He is the scientific coordinator of the GIMBE Foundation’s institutional programmes: “Let’s Save Our NHS”, aimed at safeguarding a public and universal healthcare service, and GIMBE4young, established to promote the culture of evidence-based medicine (EBM) among the healthcare professionals of the future.

He oversees the annual publication of the “Report on the Sustainability of the NHS” and coordinates the GIMBE Observatory on NHS Sustainability to ensure continuous and independent monitoring of the responsibilities and actions of all healthcare stakeholders, with the ultimate aim of ensuring the proper use of public funds and safeguarding citizens’ health.

He has coordinated projects in collaboration with the main national healthcare institutions: an assessment of the ‘fate’ of independent research funded by AIFA; the application of the framework for divestment in healthcare in collaboration with Agenas; and an evaluation of the methodological quality and transparency of guidelines produced in Italy, under the auspices of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and the Guidelines International Network.

He is the scientific director of GIMBE Education, the training programme of the GIMBE Foundation; he coordinates corporate and regional projects aimed at facilitating the transfer of evidence into professional practice and the organisation of healthcare services, guiding the process of divestment from waste and inefficiencies and reallocation to essential services and innovations.

He is the author of over 400 publications, scientific coordinator of the Italian translations of research reporting guidelines and summaries of NICE guidelines, editor-in-chief of *Evidence*, an open-access methodological journal in Italian, columnist for *Il Sole 24 Ore Sanità* with the column *Angolo di Penna*, a blogger for the *Huffington Post*, and a contributor to numerous scientific and healthcare journals.

Since 2001, he has coordinated and organised the International Conference for Evidence-based Health Care Teachers and Developers in Italy, now in its eighth edition. He has contributed to the standardisation of teaching methods for Evidence-based Practice as co-author of the Sicily Statement on Evidence-based Practice and as a member of the steering committee for the European Union Evidence-based Medicine Unity project. Together with 15 world leaders in the field of EBHC, he founded the International Society of Evidence-Based Health Care.