The final SMART Open workshop – Paediatric Foresight Training Course, took place in Warsaw on 29 and 30 November 2018. The workshop was realised in the framework of SMART – Small Medicines Advanced Research Training, a EU funded project coordinated by the Instytut Pomnik Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka (IPCZD – Poland) and aimed to raise IPCZD staff’s research profile and increase capacity in providing innovative paediatric research methods. Within the project, a specific training programme has been developed, including the organisation of staff exchanges, face to face courses and summer schools.

The meeting, entitled “Current status and future changes in the European paediatric biomedical research” was intended to draw conclusions from this three-years project and provide an overview of the existing paediatric initiatives around Europe to promote paediatric biomedical research and drugs development. Among these initiatives, a representative of KIDS Bari, the first Italian YPAG, presented the activities of the group, explaining the importance of patient’s advocacy and involvement of young people in facilitating the work of the investigators and speed up the progress of paediatric clinical research.

Furthermore, during the meeting, Dr Mariagrazia Felisi, introduced the pharmacovigilance training programme attended by Dr Katarzyna Żyluk in the fall of 2017 at CVBF and Dr Żyluk provided an overview of the results of the literature review on the methods for the causality and severity assessment of adverse events in paediatric clinical trials performed by CVBF in the framework of the PedCRIN project.

Finally, the EPTRI (European Paediatric Translational Research Infrastructure) project was presented by the CVBF CEO Donato Bonifazi, showing the general view of the project and its activities, underlining its role and the innovative oriented attitude to foster paediatric research innovation. Besides, he explained the role of the Polish partner Instytut Pomnik Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka (IPCZD), and its newly appointed Director, Dr. Marek Migdal, as Leader of the Ethics Work Package in the EPTRI Project.