Hoe bereikt een nieuw geneesmiddel de patiënt?

The Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) grants market authorisation for medicinal products in the Netherlands.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) coordinates the evaluation and safeguarding of medicinal products in the European Union.

The core task of the MEB is to evaluate the quality of every medicinal product for which marketing authorisation is applied for by the manufacturer, and to assess the risk – efficacy balance of the product concerned.

There are three different procedures that a manufacturer can follow: (a) the national procedure; (b) the decentralised procedure or mutual recognition procedure; (c) the centralised procedure.

After marketing authorisation has been granted, the MEB ensures pharmacovigilance in cooperation with partners such as the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre (Lareb).

The MEB determines the text of the package leaflet, the packaging and the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC).

The MEB checks the warnings that are sent out by manufacturers if important new information about a medicinal product becomes available.

Conflict of interest and financial support: no conflicts of interest have been reported.