He was a highest level athlete in figure skating until his 5th year of medical school at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), and was European champion and third place in the World Group Championship. Today he surfs at Matosinhos beach with his family and faces other waves. Do you have any idea who this person is?

We are talking about Manuel Ferreira de Magalhães, a researcher of the group PaCeIT – Patient-Centered Innovation and Technologies, at CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, in the area of respiratory diseases, as well as a university professor and pediatrician specialized in Pediatric Pulmonology. In recent months, he has been faced with one of the biggest challenges of his life: preventing and treating COVID-19 in children and responding to the doubts and anxieties of parents (perhaps the most difficult).

Born on November 13, 1984, he is the youngest of three brothers and the only one in the family who followed the health area. When he was young he wanted to be an engineer like his father: “Now I ask my son and he also wants to be a doctor,” he compares. The interest in Medicine would come later, much to do with figure skating (it was supposed to be roller field hockey), which he started practicing at the age of seven, at the Clube Infante de Sagres, in Porto, and then at other clubs, but always with the same coach. As a high competition athlete, it was natural that injuries and fractures would appear, although not very serious, that provided him with periodic contact with orthopedists and a better knowledge of his body. “This will have contributed to my choice for medicine,” he explains.

In 2002, when he entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto, his idea was to be an orthopedist or neurosurgeon. He changed his mind when he took Pediatrics classes. “I was lucky enough to have classes with professors José Manuel Aparício and Carla Rêgo, who are extraordinary people and who captivated me to the area,” he recalls.

After graduating in 2008, he did a general internship at the Vila Franca de Xira Hospital, and in 2010 he joined the Pediatrics internship in Setúbal. In the same year, he applied to the Ph.D. Program in Clinical and Health Services Research (PDICSS) at FMUP.

“I always wanted to do research. I just didn’t know if it would be basic or clinical research. The experience assured me that I wanted to do clinical research in health services and in the respiratory area,” he says.

It was then that he joined CINTESIS, as a researcher. Both in his doctorate and in the Research Center, he had as a reference the former professor of Biostatistics and current principal investigator of PaCeIT, João Fonseca.

“Joining CINTESIS was natural. I was always in the structure, which supported me and gave me access to research. There were many CINTESIS researchers who helped me a lot. They were fundamental. I think that it must be rare for people to get a Ph.D. all by themselves. It is much easier, much more interesting, and much more productive with a team,” he says.

He finished his internship in Pediatrics in 2015, at the University Hospital Center of São João (CHSJ) and his Ph.D. at FMUP in 2017. He is a pediatrician at the Centro Materno-Infantil do Norte since 2018, in the Pediatric Pulmonology Unit, besides working in Neonatal Emergency. He is also a pediatrician for INEM – National Institute of Medical Emergency (in articulation with the CHUSJ), doing intra-hospital transport of critically ill children from all over the Northern region to intensive care units. He is also a Guest Assistant Professor at ICBAS and FMUP.

His curriculum also includes a Fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2014) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Medicine from FMUP (2015). He is also a member of several scientific societies, including the Portuguese Society of Pediatrics, the Portuguese Society of Pediatric Pulmonology, the Portuguese Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology, and the European Respiratory Society. He has participated in several projects in the pediatric area and has signed more than a dozen articles published in scientific journals.

As a researcher at CINTESIS, he is part of research projects related to the development of new digital tools and solutions for monitoring and self-management of chronic obstructive respiratory diseases based on smartphones and integrated sensors, namely AIRDOC.

“Respiratory diseases, both acute and chronic, are the vast majority of pathologies in children. In each age group, acute or chronic diseases and their different presentations assume greater preponderance. But all children have some degree of respiratory involvement with some regularity. They have coughs, changes in auscultation… Then we have chronic diseases, like asthma. If we have tools that can be used to empower parents in self-monitoring and disease management and, at the same time, bridge the gap with the clinician, it’s fantastic,” he says enthusiastically.

In fact, it’s something that is already happening in practice: “Parents with babies with bronchiolitis or several episodes of wheezing get very anxious and WhatsApp me the sounds and videos of their children coughing and breathing. So this is something that is already done but in a non-organized, non-automated way. Parents have this need. If I have an app on a phone where I can record my baby’s cough and be able to have a measurement that indicates whether they need to be seen or whether we can monitor at home, it’s a big step forward in improving the care we provide. It’s the future.”

With the pandemic and with children confined to their homes, these last two years have been “years on hold” in terms of research. In clinical practice, he says, “fortunately, there were more doubts from parents than sick children. As of September 2021, there is a noticeable increase in respiratory disease and COVID in children. There has been more pressure, which explains the need for vaccination. I accept the doubts. It is true that we do not have one year of use of these vaccines in children as young as five years old, but we know what an mRNA vaccine is (which has 30 years of development) and we know that 99.9% of the doubts that come up on social media are unfounded. The side effects are short term and the benefits are far greater. Anyone can see that. Portugal is one of the countries with the highest vaccination rate, close to 90%. We are in paradise compared to other countries”, he concludes.

1-Year Ambition

This year, I want to resume what was suspended in the AIRDOC project, in terms of digital monitoring of cough and pulmonary auscultation in children. We will start the first meetings to move forward with studies on the use of the application in the field, at a multicenter level, in collaboration with the CMIN, CHUSJ, and other national hospitals.

I also have some studies on newborn admissions, using Big Data, which should be published in the meantime. These are very interesting studies.

5-Year Ambition

I hope that in five years we will have an application ready to be on the market, for monitoring and self-management of respiratory diseases.

Life Beyond Research and Teaching

I am the father of two children, a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I spend most of my time with them when I am not working. I started skating again but in groups. We won a European Championship and a World Cup. I would like to resume, but I don’t have the time. I make up for it by surfing with my son on the beach in Matosinhos. It’s one of my passions.