The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has held a workshop with representatives from academia to explore new ways to engage with academics and researchers. The workshop was hosted by EMA’s Healthcare Professionals Working Party (HCPWP) on 15th June.
The collaboration between EMA and academia is longstanding. Many representatives from the academic sector contribute their expertise and knowledge as experts in the evaluation of medicines, ensuring that regulatory developments in the evaluation and monitoring of medicines are keeping pace with the speed of scientific development.
“EMA wants to move to a new level of collaboration with academia. Science is progressing fast and we see an unprecedented level of complexity in the development and evaluation of new medicines. Academia play an important role in helping the EU medicines regulatory network to keep abreast of the opportunities and challenges brought by science and to have access to the right expertise to evaluate these innovative medicines,” explained EMA Executive Director Guido Rasi at the workshop. “Interaction with EU regulators and a better understanding of the regulatory environment can help academia translate their discoveries into patient-focused medicines. I believe that working more closely together will bring great benefits to public health.”
More than forty representatives from academic organisations, including European Research Infrastructures, European learned societies and universities attended the workshop. At the meeting, EMA presented the pillars of a future framework of collaboration with academia to the participants. Objectives of the framework include enhancing academia’s understanding of the EU medicines regulatory framework and increasing regulators’ understanding of the needs and expectations of academia.
The outcome of the discussion will contribute to the development of the framework which will be presented to EMA’s Management Board for adoption at its December 2016 meeting.
Presentations from the workshop are published on the event page.
A full workshop report will be published on the EMA website in the coming weeks.