EMA health professional working party elects EACPT's Gonzalo Calvo as its first co-chair

Gonzalo Calvo, chair of the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT), is the new co-chair of the HCPWP of the European Medicines Agency. 

Professor Calvo is a consultant in clinical pharmacology in Barcelona and has extensive experience both in medicines regulation, including nearly ten years as member of the Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), and in learned societies. This is the first time that the HCPWP has elected a co-chair, following its formal establishment in June 2013.  

The Patients' and Consumers' Working Party (PCWP) and the Healthcare Professionals' Working Party (HCPWP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) both elected their new co-chairs on 26th September, 2013.

David Haerry of the European AIDS TreatmentGroup (EATG) is the new co-chair of the PCWP. He has 15 years experience as an advocate for HIV patients’ rights and has been a member of the PCWP since 2006. He will replace Lise Murphy of the European Organisation for Rare Diseases (EURORDIS), who was co-chair of the PCWP since 2010 and whose mandate has come to an end. The PCWP was established in 2005.

Both David Haerry and Gonzalo Calvo will co-chair these working parties for the next three years, together with Isabelle Moulon, Head of Patients and Healthcare Professionals at the EMA.

The main role of the PCWP and the HCPWP is to provide recommendations to the EMA and its scientific committees on all matters of interest to either patients and consumers or healthcare professionals in relation to medicinal products, as well as to monitor interactions between the Agency and patients, consumers and healthcare professionals.

EACPT Executive Committee members Professor Donald Singer from the UK and Professor Ingolf Cascorbi from Germany are also members of the EMA Health Care Professionals Working Party.

Professor Simon Maxwell, co-chair of the EACPT Educational Subcommittee, is observer on behalf of the HCP-WP on the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCPeP).