Education & Training Programme (ETP) 2007

Sub-Committee chaired by Kenneth Hartigan-Go (ISoP Executive Committee member)
Contributions to this news page: Paula Marquez and Sophie Spence

History:

The 2003 Annual Meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, provided an excellent framework for creative new ideas. In this environment, the Executive Committee of the Society approved a new project, the new Education & Training Project (ETP), in order to prepare a robust educational programme, available worldwide, to promote the safest use of drugs.

Some of the goals of the training and education activities for ISoP are:

• Efficient, effective and robust knowledge on the field of pharmacovigilance
• Worldwide coverage and flexibility to adapt to the changing environment, including the use of new technologies, new regulations and legal framework.
• Integration with WHO and other international initiatives (sharing best practices and resources) and local requirements to be included
• Training and enabling trainers (regional trainers to be trained).

This project will also include recommendations to improve the communication about safety measures to health professionals and to patients.

The ETP project team met during the 4th Annual Meeting of ISoP held in Dublin from 6-8 October 2004. The 20 active members are fully committed to working together for successful delivery of the goals of the project in a timely manner. The evidence for this enthusiasm was observed during the formal presentation in the workshop entitled "Communication and Education in Pharmacovigilance", as well as in the first face-to-face meeting.

The project has covered a pilot phase where all pharmacovigilance activities in pre-graduate and postgraduate arenas have been collected and reviewed in 2 pilot countries ( Spain & UK ) through a preliminary questionnaire. The output provided relevant and important input in preparing for a more formal survey, to assess other member countries' needs and activities. Team members proposed to contact WHO centres and pharmaceutical industry subsidiaries to collect this information from all sites.

The team is also working in 3 additional areas:

• To identify funding sources. Educating people about Pharmacovigilance will promote safer drug use. Investment of resources is needed to develop adequate tools to achieve this goal.
• To educate and train the clients who will receive the most benefit from our project: health professionals, investigators and patients
• To evaluate possible accreditation through university, regulatory agencies (including EMEA and FDA, etc) considering current credit systems, and other types of accreditation.

The committee presented proposals in the fourth quarter of 2004 for the approval of the Executive Committee of ISoP in February 2005, and their progress was reviewed in the ETP meeting held in mid-October 2005 during the Annual Meeting was held in Manila, Philippines. This was the first meeting to be held in Asia . The record of the ETP meeting is attached.

During the Executive Committee meeting at the 2006 Annual Meeting in Liege, Belgium, Kenneth Hartigan-Go was nominated chair of the ETP and succeeded Paula Marquez. 

This came after a successful mid-year training course was held in Seville, Spain in the first quarter of 2006.

In March 2007, ETP conducted a basic course in pharmacovigilance and an advanced course in immunopharmacology and ADR in Budapest .

The next ISoP mid-year pharmacovigilance course will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 17-18 March 2008. This will include a basic pharmacovigilance course and an advance course in pharmacogenomics and patient safety.