CHMP Chair re-elected

21 September 2015

Tomas Salmonson's mandate is prolonged for a further three years

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) re-elected Dr Tomas Salmonson as its Chair at its September 2015 meeting. Dr Salmonson will serve a second three-year term beginning this month.

Accepting his re-election, Dr Salmonson said, “It is a great honour for me to receive the backing of my peers for another term. I have a deep respect and appreciation for the work of the dedicated and professional members of the Committee. CHMP is a forum for open discussion. Debate between members with different backgrounds and views is an essential element in delivering robust scientific opinions. I look forward to working even harder to maintain and strengthen this fruitful working environment in order to fulfil our public health mandate.”

Dr Salmonson (pictured) is Senior Scientific Advisor at the Swedish Medical Products Agency, where he has worked since 1986. He has been a member of the CHMP for more than 15 years and has served as Chair of the Committee since September 2012.

Looking to the future, Dr Salmonson sees three key priorities for the CHMP:

• Deepening the collaboration with key stakeholders, particularly the involvement of patients in in the assessment of the benefits and risks of medicines, and the ongoing work with health technology assessment bodies to facilitate patients' access to medicines;
• Facilitating the development of and early patient access to innovative medicines by fostering early dialogue with medicine developers. This continues the ongoing optimisation of support tools such as the accelerated assessment and conditional marketing authorisation mechanisms, which allow medicines that address unmet medical needs to reach patients earlier;
• Improving benefit-risk methodologies considering new trends and advances, and explaining better how regulatory decisions are reached by the Committee.

The CHMP is the Committee at the European Medicines Agency that is responsible for preparing scientific opinions on questions concerning medicines for human use. In particular the Committee is in charge of the scientific evaluation of marketing authorisation applications for new medicines. It was set up in 2004 following the entry into force of parts of the new pharmaceutical legislation and replaced the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products. The Committee is composed of one member and an alternate nominated by each of the 28 EU Member States, as well as Iceland and Norway, and five co-opted members, chosen among experts nominated by Member States or the Agency and recruited, when necessary, to provide additional expertise in a particular scientific area.