JA Chessmen

Short supply of medicines is an important issue in public health and medical care delivery at national and international levels. Monitoring and preventing medicines shortages is a key factor in sustaining the long-term and timely patients access protection in Europe. The CHESSMEN Joint Action (JA) is led by the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) and benefits from the active participation of a wide consortium involving 27 organisations (competent authorities and other professional stakeholders) in representation of 22 EU Members States (MSs). Given the above, CHESSMEN JA aims at supporting the EU MSs in implementing proper structures and measures to tackle the issue of medicine shortages. This will be done, not only by strengthening the existing coordination network, but also through capitalising and building on existing knowledge, such as the development of model initiatives/practices based on the European Commission studies and the existing Good Practices already in place in EUMSs. Taking into due consideration the outcomes of the Future-proofing pharmaceutical legislation - Study on medicine shortages: final report and the structured dialogue on security of medicines supply, the consortium will build a system to collect operative models for MSs. These models could be applied in setting up MSs to connect with the EMA SPOC Network to give continuity to data gathering and the implementation of measures against shortages in compliance with harmonised procedures and standards.