Every year, the ECA Advisory Board gets together to discuss the organisation’s current status and possible future activities to strengthen and expand its leading position as the European information and training services provider in the field of GMP and pharmaceutical Quality Assurance. This year the meeting was held in Assmannshausen near Frankfurt and concentrated to a large part on the results of the first member survey conducted in the first half of the year.

“Throughout the last year all board members have been playing again an important part in advancing the European Compliance Academy and the services we provide”, said Daniel Scheidegger, Chairman of the ECA Advisory Board. “And with the results of our survey we received some good indications for how our members perceive the organisation and its services and where we will need to put an emphasis on in the coming months. We already derived some actions, and our members will be able to see some changes shortly.”

To further increase the awareness for the current interest groups, the following activities and developments were emphasised:

1) Today, the European Qualified Person Association already represents more than 1,000 QPs, and it still receives a lot of new membership applications. One of the success factors of the group is the fact, that it provides a strong common voice for the needs and concerns of QPs throughout Europe. Surveys among the members are used to give the regulatory agencies a clear picture of the current situation with regard to compliance issues and the success as well as the problems caused by new regulations. The Association has developed a Good Practice Guide which aims at supporting QPs in interpreting the legislation. The Guide also summarises the different legal situations in all member states. The harmonisation of these national requirements is a main objective of the European QP Association.

2) The Rapid Microbiology Method (RMM) Group has nearly 200 members from Europe and abroad. Under the leadership of Dr Sven Deutschmann from Roche Diagnostics the group plans on establishing an annual meeting similar to the European QP Association’s QP Forum. In addition current activities are under development to provide a more practical help for its members in the enhanced member section.

In 2009 the ECA will celebrate its 10 year anniversary. To further strengthen its position and to increase the attractiveness of ECA as a membership organisation (currently close to 3,700 from almost 60 countries) a number of actions have been agreed on – among others the establishment of new interest groups as well as an enhanced professional development programme for GMP professionals. In addition, the organisation also seeks a closer contact to regulatory agencies to provide feedback from its members in a timely manner.

The photo show (from left to right): Daniel Scheidegger, ECA Chairman and Genzyme Pharmaceuticals, Switzerland; Matt Moran, Pharma Chemical, Ireland; Richard Bonner, Associate Partner Concept Heidelberg, UK; Colin Booth, Oxoid, UK; Dr Bernd Renger, Vetter Pharma-Fertigung, Germany; Wolfgang Heimes, ECA, Germany; Wolfgang Schmitt, Concept Heidelberg, Germany; John Taylor, MHRA, UK.

Author:
Wolfgang Heimes
On behalf of the European Compliance Academy (ECA)