European Medicines Agency publishes five-year strategy, setting out its role as a public-health agency

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has published its final “Road Map to 2015,” coinciding with the 16th anniversary of its inauguration on January 26, 2011. The road map sets out the Agency's vision in further developing its role as a European public health agency in the field of medicines.

Building on the achievements made by the previous road map initiative between 2005 and 2010, the new one proposes three priority areas for future actions to strengthen the Agency's role in protecting and promoting human and animal health in the European Union:

• Addressing public-health needs by: stimulating medicines development in areas of unmet medical needs, neglected diseases and rare diseases, and for all types of medicines for veterinary use; facilitating new approaches to medicines development; applying a more proactive approach to public-health threats where medicines are implicated.