EMA Videos on why EMA matters to European citizens

EMA Videos on why EMA matters to European citizens

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has published on EMA’s website and on the official EMA YouTube channel, three video animations to explain how it ensures that medicines are effective and safe for the benefit of patients across the European Economic Area (EEA). The first video, entitle “ Working for every patient in Europe”, explains that the Agency assesses, supervises and monitors medicines long before they appear in pharmacies and hospitals, and all the time while they are on the market, by bringing together the best expertise in a European network. This first cartoon shows that the Agency assesses all the evidence and, if the benefits are greater than the risks, it recommends to the European Commission that the medicine can be marketed in EU, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway. The second video, “From lab to patient: how medicines are approved”, describes the journey of a medicine from initial lab tests to its authorization by EMA and shows that EMA is part of a network that is has been created to protect the citizen, so that treatments are available wherever across Europe. Finally, the third video, entitled “Keeping medicines safe”, focuses on how the Agency collects information on side effects from new clinical studies, scientific publications and reports from doctors, pharmacists and patients to keep medicines safe, by monitoring medicines on the market constantly. EMA, in fact, may conclude that a medicine has too many risks and may recommend a range of actions to the European Commission – for example, the way the medicine is used could be changed or the medicine could be taken off the market. This initiative intends to raise awareness on the importance of EMA’s role, keeping the citizen informed and contrasting the more and more widespread skepticism about the drugs safety.

February 28th, 2018|