Building a leaner, more streamlined organisation

29 July 2016

EMA updates organisational structure

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has announced some organisational adjustments and important strategic amendments of its Organisation chart of the European Medicines Agency, as of 1 September that will result in a leaner, more streamlined architecture and improved administrative support. Building on the 2013/2014 reorganisation of the Agency, the changes fine-tune the re-engineered organisational model to further improve efficiency and effectiveness of EMA's operations. All changes will come into effect on 1 September 2016.

“We want to do more with the resources we have by designing the Agency's structures and processes around the lifespan of medicines,” said EMA's Executive Director Guido Rasi. “With the changes announced today we are fine-tuning our operating model which has proven successful over the past two years and strengthening the efficiency of our administration.”

The main changes include:

• reduction of the number of divisions dealing with human medicines from four to three, with one division responsible for support to medicines developers, one for the evaluation of medicines bringing scientific and procedure management under one umbrella, and one for the oversight of medicines, including pharmacovigilance and inspections.
• creation of a new function dedicated to strengthening the collaboration between EMA and the national competent authorities by overseeing the implementation of the joint network strategy to 2020, promoting innovation in regulatory science across the European regulatory system for medicines, and addressing the increasing complexity of the committees' activities coordination.
• streamlining the division dealing with administration and corporate management through separate entities for strategic planning, budgeting and monitoring, finance and procurement, and support to staff and delegates.

Interactions between stakeholders and the Agency will not be affected by these changes.