Registration Opens for Workshop on Conflicts of Interests

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is inviting expressions of interest in its workshop on Conflicts of Interests on 6 September 2013.

The workshop, entitled 'Best expertise vs conflicts of interests: Striking the right balance', is intended to elicit the views and concerns from academia, patient organizations, Committee representatives, NGOs, the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific media on the Agency’s current conflicts of interests policy. Representatives from national competent authorities, European Union (EU) institutions and other agencies will also attend the workshop.

During the last years, the EMA has taken comprehensive steps to strengthen its handling of conflicts of interests. This was acknowledged by both the European Parliament and the European Court of Auditors, which found that, despite highlighting some areas for further improvement, the Agency now has some of the most advanced policies and procedures among EU agencies for declaring, assessing and managing potential conflicts of interests.

The main challenge in operating the strengthened procedures is how to achieve the right balance between ensuring the impartiality and independence of experts involved in the Agency’s work, versus the need to secure the best-possible scientific expertise to continually deliver high quality scientific assessments.

Feedback from stakeholders at the workshop will help to define and analyse the extent of the challenge, and will assist the Agency to find the most appropriate solutions to address this.

Expressions of interest to attend the workshop should be sent to [email protected] by Thursday, 1 August 2013. Please include your name, title and organization in your email. Places are limited and will be allocated to ensure a fair representation across all stakeholder groups and organisations.

The workshop will be held from 10:30 to 16:30 at the European Medicines Agency in Canary Wharf, London.

The agenda of the workshop will be available shortly.

The outcomes of the workshop and presentations will be published on this website.

A live broadcast of the workshop will be available.