preview

Acm Case Study

Decent Essays
Open Document

The Advisory Committee on Prescription Medicines (ACPM)
Background
During the pre-market authorisation process for therapeutic goods (medicines and medical devices), many regulatory agencies seek unbiased advice from external experts to address areas of scientific or technical uncertainty and, in particular, clinical medical expertise, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has a well-defined process for obtaining expert advice from its advisory committees and incorporating that advice into its decision processes.
The ACPM is one of the TGA’s nine statutory committees and serves an important purpose in the agency’s regulation of medicines, providing independent expert advice …show more content…

These questions are of financial importance to the companies sponsoring the applications, with millions of dollars and may sometimes influence the survival of the company in Australia.
TGA and advisory committee deliberations are occurring in an evolving drug development environment. New technologies offer the potential for therapeutic advances at the same time as concerns about medicines safety have resulted in calls for increasing amounts of data on new medicines. Public critics of the process have noted lack of approval of medicines perceived as beneficial, whereas others seemingly demand that only drugs without any risk of harm be approved. These tensions increase the importance of the advisory committee process and the responsibilities placed on committee members.
Committee processes
Given these stakes, it is critical that the advisory committee process operates with optimal …show more content…

The first “Speaker” usually summarises the evidence in the application provided in support of quality, safety and efficacy as background, so as to provide the setting for the issues that need to be discussed. The second “Speaker” simply enlarges on the issues before general discussion.
Committee membership work and responsibilities are not like other professional challenges most members encounter. So it is predicable that not all committee members will contribute effectively to the committee meeting’s goals. Experience suggests that;
• Some committee members will not critically read the documents provided as briefing in the agenda 2 weeks ahead of the meeting. This may reflect an unanticipated workload associated with meeting preparation. The TGA’s briefing documents for a single item at a meeting may be over 5,000 pages, although the average is closer to 2-3000. Even this average load represents a significant time commitment for

Get Access