EMA releases six recommendations to fight medication errors

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued six key recommendations to reduce errors during the prescribing, dispensing or administration of medicine in the European Union (EU).

‘They are the single most common preventable cause of adverse events in medication practice,’ said the Agency. Its plan to attack the problem followed an EMA workshop staged in February and March. Its recommendations include:

• Better harmonising and developing the terminologies and definitions of medication errors at EU and international levels, to help inform medicine consumers and practitioners;
• Establishing collaborative relationships on the issue between national patient safety authorities, national regulators, EMA and the European Commission;
• Developing new methods to identify medication errors through data pooling and analysis;
• Systematically assessing and lowering the risk of medication errors by taking these risks into account during medicine development, including during the marketing authorisation process;
• Helping build the capacity of patient and consumer groups and healthcare professionals to improve safe medication practices; and
• Supporting research into safe medication practices.

EMA said these actions would be priorities for the Agency, the European Commission and related EU regulators, who would consider ‘their potential benefit for public health and the resource implications in Member States and at EU level’.