Patients, consumers and carers are involved in a wide range of European Medicines Agency (EMA) activities.

They are involved as either representatives of European Union (EU) patients' and consumers' organisations, representatives of their own organisation or as individual experts depending on the nature of the activity.

Patients representing their communityPatients representing their organisationPatients as individual experts

Overview of patient involvement along the medicines lifecycle at EMA

Getting involved by representing an organisation

Any not-for-profit organisation that fulfils the following eligibility criteria is welcome to express its interest in getting involved in the work of EMA:

  • legitimacy, with statutes registered in the European Union (EU);
  • clear mission and objectives with an interest in medicines;
  • being representative of patients or consumers throughout the EU;
  • adequate structure and consultation modalities;
  • transparency.

For full details, see:

Interested organisations should fill in the following application form and send it to EMA together with any supporting information. The Agency welcomes applications at any time and will send an acknowledgment of receipt after receiving the application:

EMA will inform all organisations of the outcome of the evaluation of their application. EMA publishes information on eligible organisations on Eligible patients' and consumers' organisations.

Please note that eligibility is re-assessed annually. For more information, see:

Getting involved as an individual expert

Patient experts contribute their real-life experience of living with their condition directly into scientific regulatory discussions.

EMA contacts experts primarily via its network of eligible organisations. However, individuals interested in working with EMA can also be included in the individuals’ stakeholder database, by completing the online registration form:

For more information on the database, see:

Steps to take before getting involved

All experts, including patient and consumer representatives, need to register in the EMA experts management tool as ‘medicines expert’ before taking part in EMA activities, particularly related to medicine assessment.

EMA has a robust competing interests policy to ensure experts have no interests in the pharmaceutical or medical-device industry that could affect their impartiality.

All patient and consumer representatives working with EMA must complete a publicdeclaration of interests and confidentiality undertaking form.

EMA will provide all new experts with instructions on how to:

  • Get an EMA account to access the experts management tool
  • Complete the registration process

When using the experts management tool, guidance is also available under the 'Useful information' tab. 

Individual expert database

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