Wanted: Applicants for French Health Advisory Committees

France’s Agence nationale de sécurité du medicament et des produits de santé is looking for external experts to help assess the benefits and risks of health products, including medical devices.

Committee members will be tasked with updating existing risk management plans, reassessing risks and benefits of products, monitoring medical devices, initiating market halts and implementing preventive measures to help minimize the risks associated with using health products.

The committee will have 18 members, to include:

• Four medical device professionals with therapeutic competence;
• Seven professionals with expertise in pharmacovigilance, medical devices, pharmacoepidemiology, toxicology, clinical biology, hospital engineering or social science;
• Three experts in general medicine;
• One dispensing pharmacist;
• One hospital pharmacist; and
• Two representatives from healthcare system user associations.

Those interested may send an application package detailing their expertise, a letter with their public health background, resume and list of publications by email to candidatures.experts@ansm.sante.fr until Oct. 31.

To minimize the risk of conflict of interest, candidates must waive or give up any personal compensation from companies, institutions or organizations whose activities fall within the committee’s scope. Further they, must disclose any potential conflicts of interest from the last five years at each meeting. They also may not serve as a principal investigator in preclinical or clinical trials involving a product that could fall under the committee’s purview.

Read an overview in French of the committees and their responsibilities here: www.fdanews.com/10-05-15-ANSM-form.pdf. — Elizabeth Hollis