About 100.000 Molecular Genetic Tests (MGT) are carried out in Spain every year, in more than one hundred laboratories, most of which (80%) are located in university hospitals in the Public Health System, and the remaining 20% of which are private laboratories, as it is reported in the “Directory of Spanish Molecular Genetic Testing Laboratories”, published at the end of 2004 by the Spanish Agency for Evaluation of Health Technologies of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. That publication also included the information collected from an OECD survey to document the availability and extent of molecular genetic testing in the member countries, that was conducted in the case of Spain, under the supervision of Prof.
Armando Albert and Dr. Luis M. Plaza in the Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation (CINDOC) of the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC) as part of a research project financed by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. The results of the survey showed that the Spanish situation regarding aspects related to the availability and quality assurance of the MGT was similar to that observed in many other OECD member countries and, as was the case in some of them, the absence of specific legislation to regulate basic aspects of molecular genetic testing performed for medical purposes was evident.