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Professor Josef Smolen, who was the president of EULAR 2003–2004, started his career as a basic researcher but gradually switched over more and more to clinical work.

— I still see patients twice a week and it gives me great pleasure. Everyone in our group is a combined researcher and clinician, and we inspire each other by looking at the diseases from different angles. Every year about one thousand patients from Vienna and surroundings
are treated here at the clinic, which is a kind of emergency ward or early diagnosis
clinic for patients with rheumatoid symptoms.

— Before we started this the patients normally had to wait for around six months before they could see a rheumatology specialist. With our system we usually see them within a day from their first visit to a GP. — We have educated almost all the GP:s in and around Vienna, so that they can do a rapid preclinical diagnosis, including relevant blood tests etc, before
sending the patient to us. But many patients also come straight to the clinic.