On 8-9 March 2018, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) held “the Second International Awareness Session for international regulators, academia and non-governmental organisations”. The meeting provided the occasion to present an overall overview on how the European medicines regulatory network works as well as on the role of EMA and its interaction with scientific experts. Consorzio per Valutazioni Biologiche e Farmacologiche has been selected as EMA stakeholder and invited to participate to this important meeting, where the participants had the occasion to meet EMA staff and explore the Agency’s work in details. As foreseen by the EU Legislation, a fundamental task of EMA is to develop appropriate contacts between the Agency and the representatives of the industry, consumers and health professionals, in order to promote a proper dialogue and provide efficient, targeted and timely information. Through these kind of initiatives, the Agency intends to enhance multi-stakeholder discussions on some fundamental topics such as the advanced therapy medicines and the possibility to explore solutions to expand patient access in Europe as well as the big data management in medicines development, e-Health initiative and shortages and medicine availability. The event also provided the participants with networking opportunities with academics, Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) staff and regulators from and outside the Europe.

EMA published further materials after the event available here.