Call for expressions of interest to appoint patient and healthcare-professional representatives as members of Paediatric Committee
The Health and Consumers Directorate-General of the European Commission has published a call for expressions of interest for positions on the European Medicines Agency's Paediatric Committee (PDCO) as representatives of healthcare-professional and patient organisations.
This call is intended to select candidates to replace the Committee's current civil-society representatives for a renewable three-year period starting on 1 August 2014. The Commission will appoint one member and an alternate for each of the two positions.
Expressions of interest should be submitted to the European Commission no later than 8 November 2013, either by e-mail or post. Further information on the assessment criteria and the application procedure can be found on the Commission's website.
The role of patient organisation representatives on the PDCO is to ensure that children's (and their parents') needs are taken into account in the deliberations of the Committee. Healthcare-professional organisation representatives are responsible for ensuring that the needs of practitioners, clinicians, pharmacists or other healthcare professionals, as well as real-life implications, are taken into account when the Committee looks at paediatric research projects.
Representatives of patient and healthcare-professional organisations are involved in the PDCO's procedures in the same way as other Committee members. They are expected to attend the monthly Committee meetings at the Agency and to actively contribute to scientific discussions, examine documents and make comments with a specific focus on the target group that they represent.
The main role of the PDCO is to assess the content of paediatric investigation plans (PIPs) submitted by medicine developers and adopt opinions on them. This includes assessing applications for a full or partial waivers and applications for deferrals.
Like the Agency's other committees, the PDCO has one member per Member State. In addition, the European Paediatric Regulation foresees the participation of civil-society representatives.
Similarly, the Agency's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) and Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (COMP) also have representatives of healthcare-professional and patient organisations as members, as foreseen by the European pharmacovigilance legislation and the European Orphan Regulation, respectively.