As official members of the European Medicines Agency Patients’ and Consumers’ Working Party (PCWP), we are also very active in several of the agency’s topic groups to ensure that the regulatory work done by the European Union in the field of medicines takes into account the views of allergy, asthma and COPD patients. In May, the representatives of the EMA Digital Health topic group participated in a teleconference to identify gaps and actions that EMA and stakeholders from patients and consumers associations could take to advance on the three working axes of the topic group: Real World Evidence (RWE) data, electronic product information, mHealth and social media. EFA Isabel Proaño is our focal point in that group and Dutch patient expert Martine Puhl represented EFA in the workshop EMA organised on the topic in April. At the moment the group has gathered a six pages document with suggested actions and next steps for the agency and stakeholders to implement, including the safety, utility and exploitability of RWE data, the format and depth of an electronic product information app, the role EMA could take regulating wellbeing apps, or the suggestion to have a more supportive EMA presence in social media (sharing content from patient groups on international days for example).
At EFA, we are very much interested in knowing and participating in the development of digital health, as we understand it can increase among others accessibility and empowerment of patients to get the right care and self-management. Our EFA leaders meeting during 2018 EFA AGM was precisely on the topic of digital health.
Learn more about our work on eHealth here.