Happy Birthday to EMA's Healthcare Professionals’ Working Party

This week we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Healthcare Professionals’ Working Party at the European Medicines Agency .

I can’t emphasise enough how fundamental this working party is to the dialogue and exchange with healthcare professional organisations on issues of common interest on medicines.

It is a unique platform consisting of 22 healthcare professional organisations that represent various clinical learned societies and professional groups such as doctors, pharmacists and nurses. Their feedback and input are essential for shaping our understanding of the needs and challenges of using medicines in the real world and the impact of regulatory decisions on patients’ lives.

Over the last 10 years there were many successful activities. I want to highlight just a few of these achievements:

• The working party has helped us to improve the way benefits and risks of medicines are communicated in the Product Information;
• Their feedback on risk minimisation measures, with a focus on barriers and enablers of their implementation in healthcare, have been key for developing the understanding of EMA’s safety committee, the #PRAC, of what works in real life;
• The working party has also helped us design a new process to get input on issues around patient care from the first day of the evaluation of a new application by our human medicines committee (#CHMP), which complements other engagement methodologies where individual experts are involved.

?Looking ahead, the dialogue with the Healthcare Professionals’ Working Party is more important than ever. We continue working together on topics such as clinical trial design, personalised medicine, shortages and availability of medicines, antimicrobial resistance and improving preparedness for the next public health crisis. In addition to the ongoing work, for example to implement the new Clinical Trial Regulation or EMA’s extended mandate, further legislation such as the future European Health Data Space or the revision of the EU pharmaceutical regulation will lead to an even greater need for collaboration with healthcare professionals and other stakeholders.

Technological and scientific advancements are continuously creating new ways to treat patients and collect data on safety and effectiveness of medicines. Knowledge is first gained by those on the ground, who see patients day in and out. This expertise needs to be brought into the regulation of medicines, and the organisations healthcare professionals represent are best placed to be a major source of this expertise, as well as introducing new generations of practitioners to the regulatory work.

A big thank you to all the healthcare professionals who engage with us every day, and a special thank you to former co-chairs Isabelle Moulon, Gonzalo Calvo Rojas and Ulrich Jaeger , as well as current co-chairs Rosa Giuliani and Juan Garcia Burgos. Your vision and leadership have been the driving force behind much of the work and achievements of the last four mandates!

#HealthcareProfessionals #Nurses #Pharmacists #Doctors #Health #Medicines

European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology - EAACI , European Union of Medical Specialists , European Academy of Neurology , EUROPEAN ALLIANCE FOR VISION RESEARCH & OPHTHALMOLOGY (EU EYE) , The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) , European Association of Urology , The European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM) , European Forum for Primary Care (EFPC) , European Hematology Association (EHA) , EULAR - European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology , European Respiratory Society , European Society of Cardiology , ESMO - European Society for Medical Oncology , EUROPEAN UNION GERIATRIC MEDICINE SOCIETY-SOCIETE DE MEDECINE GERIATRIQUE DE L'UNION EUROPEENNE , European Society of Radiology , ESNO, European Specialist Nurses Organisation , Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU) , Standing Committee of European Doctors (CPME) , UEG - United European Gastroenterology