EMA increases public information on conflicts of interest of experts and management

The European Medicines Agency this week updated its list of European experts to display each expert's risk level. This update follows the publication of all of the experts' annual declarations of interests in September 2011.

The Agency assigns a risk level to each expert in its 3,500-strong list in line with his or her declared interests in the pharmaceutical industry. The EMA uses this risk level, together with the information in the declaration of interests, to determine each expert's permitted level of involvement in the Agency's activities.

A risk level of 1 indicates no interests in the pharmaceutical industry, level 2 represents indirect interests and level 3 represents direct interests. Experts with a risk level of 3 have their activities restricted to the greatest extent in their work with the Agency. The risk level is based on the expert's interests within the past five years.