Our continuous input into the information, evaluation and safety and development policies of medicines in Europe is an achievement that we celebrate, especially after the renewal of EFA membership to the EMA Patients’ and Consumers’ Working Party (PCWP) for the mandate 2016-2019.
On the 14th of June, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) Patients’ and Consumers’ Working Party (PCWP) celebrated its 10th anniversary.
EMA is a regulatory agency of the European Union based in London with the mission to ensure that all medicines that enter the EU single market are safe for people. Since 2006, patients’ and consumers’ organisations have a constant forum of interaction with EMA. EFA joined the PCWP in March 2009 and our membership has just been renewed for the mandate 2016-2019. EFA’s new representative at the PCWP will be EFA Secretary of Board Dan Murphy, while EFA Vice-President Erna Botjes will be the alternate.
We are honoured to continue being part of this family of patients’ and consumers’ organisations and to work together to increase patients’ involvement in all decisions influencing their health. “Nothing on patients without patients”, we have the unique expertise of living with the disease and patients’ views have to be sought when taking important choices affecting their daily-lives.
We recommend reading the 2015 report on EMA interaction with patients, consumers, healthcare professionals and their organisations to get a better grasp of how important this partnership is for both EMA and the European patient community.
In addition, EMA and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have set up a new ‘cluster’ on patient engagement. The cluster will provide a forum to share experiences and best practices on the way the two agencies involve patients in development, evaluation and post-authorisation activities related to medicines. By way of this 10 year celebration, we also want thank all the individual patients and advocates who have been involved in the EMA activities through EFA.