EACPT - 2018 Updates from Stockholm

EACPT Executive Committee meeting in Stockholm

The EACPT Executive Committee is meeting in early April 2018 in Stockholm to plan for future activities.

Key matters for discussion include

1. Future EACPT Congresses - the next is due to be held in 2019 in Stockholm as a partnership between the EACPT and the Swedish Society for Pharmacology, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. The Congress will address Tomorrow's Healthcare Challenges and will be held at the City Conference Centre - 5 minutes from Stockholm Central Station.
2. The next EACPT Focus meeting: Innovations in CPT Education - to be held at the University of Birmingham 7-8 September 2018.
3. New EACPT Awards for Best Scientific Paper in the previous 12 months. These awards will be launched on 1st June 2018 and awarded initially every 2 months (6 times a year) from August 2018. Award winners will receive a free one year Individual Associate Membership (IAM) of the EACPT. Winners who are already EACPT IAMs will receive a 100€ prize. Papers which receive a EACPT Scientific Paper Award will be eligible to be considered for the biennial EACPT Scientific Award.
4. EACPT working groups on Education, Research, Young Professionals, and Regulation and Ethics.
5. New EACPT web series on Meet the Clinical Pharmacologists
6. Opportunities from links with international organisations such as the European Medicines Agency, IUPHAR, EPHAR and UEM
7. Opportunities for Individual Associate Members including:
* discounted registration fees for EACPT meetings
* online access to the official EACPT Journal - Clinical Therapeutics
* networking with colleagues worldwide through the global EACPT network of Associate Members
* active involvement in EACPT Working Parties and other activities  

Find out how to become an Associate Member of the EACPT  

The EACPT Executive Committee meets 6 monthly, with regular additional discussions by teleconference on key EACPT strategy and activities.

Future EACPT Congresses will be held in:
- 2019 Stockholm
- 2021 Athens
- 2023 Rotterdam

The EACPT was founded in 1993 - 25 years ago - and now includes as members all national organisations for clinical pharmacology in Europe, as well as organisations from further afield internationally. The EACPT aims to provide educational and scientific support for the more than 4000 individual professionals interested in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics throughout the European region, with its congresses attended by a global audience. The EACPT also advises policy makers on how the specialty can contribute to human health and wealth.

EACPT supports first study of essential competencies in prescribing among European medical students

EACPT has funded the first study of Essential Competencies in Prescribing among European medical students. The study was led by the Working Group on Education of the EACPT and involved 895 Final-Year Medical Students attending 26 medical schools in 17 European countries.  

European medical students should have acquired adequate prescribing competencies before graduation, but prior to this study it was not known whether this is the case. In this international multicenter study, the researchers evaluated the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) of final-year medical students across Europe. In a cross-sectional design, 26 medical schools from 17 European countries were asked to administer a standardized assessment and questionnaire to 50 final-year students. 

Although there were differences between schools, results showed an overall lack of essential prescribing competencies among final-year students in Europe. Students had a poor knowledge of drug interactions and contraindications, and chose inappropriate therapies for common diseases or made prescribing errors.

These important findings results suggest that undergraduate teaching in CPT is inadequate in many European schools, leading to incompetent prescribers and potentially unsafe patient care. A European core curriculum with clear learning outcomes and assessments should be urgently developed.

The manuscript describing the study has now been published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and is freely accessible.

The next EACPT Congress is in Prague from 24th - 27th June 2017

Prague abstract deadline: 6th Feb 2017

Prague EACPT Congress registration is now open

The EACPT was founded 24 years ago and now includes as members all national organisations for clinical pharmacology in Europe, as well as organisations from further afield internationally. The EACPT aims to provide educational and scientific support for the more than 4000 individual professionals interested in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics throughout the European region, with its congresses attended by a global audience. The EACPT also advises policy makers on how the specialty can contribute to human health and wealth.

Pharmacovigilance: update on activities by the European Medicines Agency

The European Medicines Agency is today holding its Tenth stakeholder forum on the pharmacovigilance legislation of the European Union.  This forum brings together regulators with patients, consumers, healthcare professionals and industry, to take stock of what the EMA has achieved and what needs to be the focus over the coming years.

The programme is being broadcast live with presentations thereafter available on the EMA website.

Fergus Sweeney (EMA) & June Raine (PRAC Chair)

Key presentations include:

-  a 3-year update on pharmacovigilance activities by Dr Helen Lee from the European Commission 

- a report on SCOPE (The Strengthening Collaboration for Operating Pharmacovigilance in Europe) by Dr June Raine, head of the EMA's PRAC (Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee)

- the Impact of pharmacovigilance by Almath Spooner from the Health Products Regulatory Authority, Ireland

- the PROTECT health project involving active information-sharing by patients

- the WEB-RADR project on harnessing mobile apps and geo-tagging from Philip Tregunno from the UK MHRA - using social media as a signal detection and strengthening tool

-  actions from the EMA Risk Minimisation Measures Topic Group from Jamie Wilkinson, PGEU (Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union)

The EACPT – the European Assocation for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics – has 34 member countries in the EU region and beyond, and around 800 individual members. Considering some of the recent pharmacovigilance activities important for an organisation such as the EACPT, these include:

–      the 2013 black triangle scheme which concerns an evolving list of medicines under additional monitoring, building on UK experience of this approach to pharmacovigilance. Many EACPT members are directly or indirectly involved in reporting and monitoring issues related to safety of medicines

–      The EMA-ADR database of ~6 million reports - a growing resource for recording and assessing risk from medicines

–      Robust systems regarding the supply chain are vital to ensure safe medicines including from internet pharmacies. Falsified/contaminated/counterfeit medicines must be excluded both in established and newer members of the EU. This will be one of the– key themes at the next EACPT Congress in Prague in June in 2017.

Important drivers for change over the next five years include

- transparency and impact of EMA pharmacovigilance activities

- enabling partnerships, including through active EMA working parties involving healthcare professionals, patients and consumers

- Digital Media to complement current safety systems for evaluating medicines

 

Enhanced systems are needed for evaluating Real World health data across the EU region, for example analogous to the US Sentinel model – an HMO partnership with FDA and Harvard, and large Clinical Practice databases in the UK.

These Real World health data resources are needed to support evaluating signals from social media to complement existing systems for identifying and preventing adverse drug reactions, as well as to support development of medicines for patients with rare diseases.

Effective expanding use of social media will to enhance communications on PV from the EMA to its partner organisations: and through them tp health professionals, patients and other stakeholders. Systematic heterogenous use of social media provides great opportunities to enhance efficiency of effective delivery and monitoring adoption of safety messages – some of which were aired at the EMA earlier this week – presentations from the day will be on the EMA website. 

Digital Media for Health and the European Medicines Agency

The European Medicine Agency is today holding a Workshop on Social Media for its

Human Scientific Committees' Working Parties with Patients’ and Consumers’ Organisations (PCWP) and Healthcare Professionals’ Organisations. 

Social media is a group of electronic communication tools that have the potential to change how healthcare professionals, researchers, patients and consumers manage and share information in the digital age, including on the safe and effective use of medicines.

The Workshop opened with a keynote talk by M-K Looi, Wellcome Trust, on "Going viral: the state of play and potential of social media in 2016". This was followed by talks by S. Labbe, communications expert from the EMA and notes on experience of use of social media by the USA FDA presented by 2 FDA pharmacists – C. Chew and K Chiu.
 

The EMA Social Media topic group had previously identified areas and patterns of use of social media by PCWP and HCPWP member organisations in relation to the EMA and to their other key professional areas of interest and activity. In a new survey conducted over the summer of 2016, SWOT feedback has been obtained from health organisations currently active in use of social media and a further group of  organisations not currently active in use of social media.

An analysis of findings of the SWOT analysis will be presented and discussed followed by break-out sessions on best practice in use of social media experts. Further sessions will consider how digital information could be relevant to regulatory decision-making.  

The sessions are being recorded with presentations to be made available on the EMA website.