Medicines agency board signs off tighter rules on conflicts of interests

The European Medicines Agency’s management board has adopted a revamped procedure to deal with conflicts of interests of its staff, scientific experts, committee and management board members during the assessment of drugs. This is the last step in the tightening of the agency’s rules to ensure impartiality in the evaluation of medicines. However, some board members pointed out that under these rules, suitable experts could become hard to find.