Proposals for public information on prescription medicines
The European Commission has recently issued revised proposals clarifying the information that industry should make available to the public on prescription-only medicines. This follows a revision of its earlier proposals on the subject, rejected by the European Parliament in 2010. The new version attempts to incorporate Parliament's requests, and, according to the Commission, has the overall objective of empowering patients and promoting the rational use of medicines by ensuring that industry provides good quality and objective information on all prescription-only medicines.
The new proposals uphold the current ban on the advertisement of prescription-only medicines. They foresee that only certain information on the medicines in question will be allowed, and that this information will only be allowed through limited channels of communication which fulfil specific quality criteria. The revised proposals also seek to further strengthen the current system for monitoring the safety of medicines, which is known as pharmacovigilance. Press release More information