From the molecule to the population: a scientist in public office.

1. The scientific background

Nuclear medicine is one of the most interdisciplinary specialties in medicine. Its practitioners work with radiochemists who synthesise tracers, physicists who build and calibrate detectors, and clinicians who interpret scans alongside the rest of the clinical picture. Research in the field is often translational: a new tracer or imaging protocol is tested in patients and judged by whether it changes diagnosis or treatment.

The three areas named in Schillaci's institutional profiles describe that chain. Nuclear medicine is the clinical discipline. Molecular imaging is the scientific goal of visualising specific biological processes, such as glucose use, receptor expression or cell proliferation. Image fusion is the technique that makes the results clinically useful by placing functional signals on an anatomical map.

2. The publication record

Two figures appear in public profiles: more than 350 peer-reviewed publications (OECD speaker profile) and more than 220 articles in PubMed (Italian press, 2022). The difference is mainly one of method. PubMed indexes biomedical journals, while broader counts include other indexed outputs. This site does not list or summarise individual papers. Readers who want the primary literature should search PubMed or Scopus by author name.

Public scrutiny of a scientist-minister's record is legitimate, and the research literature remains the place to examine it.

3. Evidence-based policy

Evidence-based policy applies the logic of evidence-based medicine to decisions about populations: what does the best available evidence say, how certain is it, and what are the trade-offs? In a health ministry it shapes decisions on what to include in the essential levels of care, which screening programmes to fund and which vaccines to recommend.

The Minister has repeatedly linked resources to results. In October 2026 he said that what matters is not only how much is spent but "how" it is spent and what health outcomes it produces. That position requires measurement, which is why national monitoring platforms for waiting lists and the LEA, and the structured data of the FSE 2.0, are part of the same agenda.

4. Health research and medical technology

Italy's public health research rests on a few pillars: the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the national public health institute founded in 1934; the IRCCS network of research hospitals recognised by the Ministry of Health; the universities and their teaching hospitals; and the Ministry's own competitive research funding (ricerca finalizzata). Medical technology links research to care, from the diagnostic equipment financed by the PNRR to new medicines evaluated by AIFA.

International cooperation is part of the same system. At the 2024 G7 in Ancona, Italy committed $21 million to research and development of new antibiotics, a field where market incentives have long been too weak to sustain investment.