EAHP represents over 29,000 hospital pharmacists across 36 member countries. EAHP represents and develops the hospital pharmacy profession within Europe in order to ensure the continuous improvement of care and outcomes for patients in the hospital setting. This is achieved through science, research, education, practice, as well as sharing best-practice and responsibility with other healthcare professionals.
The EAHP Board, elected for three-year terms, oversees the association’s activities. Comprising directors responsible for core functions, it meets regularly to implement strategic goals. Supported by EAHP staff, the Board controls finances, coordinates congress organization, and ensures compliance with statutes and codes of conduct.
The EAHP staff supports the Board in executing EAHP’s mission. The Staff assists in financial management, events organisations, policy activities and all EAHP projects. The EAHP staff works closely with EAHP’s members and ensures the effective communication all relevant stakeholders.
The first member countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and The Netherlands in 1972. EAHP has now 36 EAHP members and 2 Associate Members. EAHP is open to countries members of the Council of Europe and since 2022 to organisations representing the interests of hospital pharmacists from outside the Council of Europe (Associate Membership)
EAHP’s structure is also composed by different standing committes: EAHP Scientific Committee, EAHP Education Executive Committee and the EAHP CTF Steering Committee.
At EAHP, we are committed to transparency in our governance, ethical standards, and funding practices. This section provides open access to our foundational documents, including the EAHP Statutes, Code of Conduct, and Funding Sources. By sharing these resources, we aim to uphold accountability and foster trust with our members, partners, and the public.
Keep up with all EAHP’s events and webinars. Contact the team at info@eahp.eu should you have any questions about upcoming events or activities.
Here you can find all upcoming events organised by EAHP and by all its members and associate members. Do not hesitate to contact the events team at events@eahp.eu should you have any questions about the organisation of these events.
Hospital pharmacists conduct a critical role in the care of patients in hospitals. Learn more about what they do here and in all the pages under Hospital Pharmacy practice and Policy.
Self-Assessment
SILCC
Closed SIGs
EAHP brings together experts from many areas of hospital pharmacy practice providing and highlighting good local sustainable practices as that can be up-scaled and shared with other countries. The EAHP Working Group on Sustainability has the aim of reducing the environmental burden of the hospital pharmacy services.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), and its 36 member country platforms are creating a Common Training Framework for the hospital pharmacy education in Europe. The goal of this project is to allow the free movement of hospital pharmacists within the European Union.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP) have collaboratively developed the Oath to Society. The Oath to Society is all encompassing and acts as a contract for excellence in providing compassionate patient care, working as part of the healthcare team and advancing the pharmacy profession, and showcasing how clinical and hospital pharmacists work every day
A day created to highlight the importance and to celebrate the work done by hospital pharmacies. This day celebrates all hospital pharmacy teams.
Catch up with EAHP’s press releases
Find all EAHP relevant publication like the EAHP Surveys, annual reports and the history books.
The European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (EJHP) is the only official journal of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and is committed to advancing the science, practice and profession of hospital pharmacy. As the premier communication platform for hospital pharmacists worldwide, EJHP is a major source for continuing education as well as updates on advances in the practice and standard of pharmaceutical care for patients.
When EAHP and Hospital pharmacists appear in the news.
EAHP publishes a monthly EU monitor with updates about the latest EAHP initiatives and information relevant for the hospital pharmacy profession.
Sponsor Channel
The Sponsor Channel is designed to maximise visibility and engagement, allowing sponsors to connect with the hospital pharmacy community and partners in a dynamic and interactive environment. From product demonstrations to networking sessions, the Sponsor Channel offers a range of opportunities for sponsors to showcase their offerings and generate leads in the new EAHP Website.
The EAHP EU Monitor is a regular round up of news relevant to hospital pharmacy in Europe.
You can subscribe to receive the EAHP EU Monitor by email HERE.
EAHP has released a new short video encouraging all individuals and associations with an interest in hospital pharmacy education to register to participate in a pan-European online Delphi consultation on a common training framework.
With over 100 individuals and associations already registered to participate in the online Delphi consultation that will commence from 28 February, EAHP is keen that no person who wishes to make an input to the process of finalising agreement on the framework’s content misses their chance to express their view.
Accordingly, the deadline to register is being extended for a further three weeks, until 1700 CET on Monday 20 February 2017. The registration portal is available HERE
To those who have registered already, details about how to participate, as well as the draft version of the framework, will be sent shortly.
More information about the common training framework project is available HERE.
*EAHP thanks Catarina Nobre, President of the European Pharmaceutical Students Association (EPSA) for her assistance in producing this video.
**Readers of the EAHP EU Monitor with an interest in the Common Training Framework may also be interested in Keynote Speech 3 at the upcoming EAHP Congress in Cannes (22-24th March 2017). Entitled “Introducing the Common Training Framework”, EAHP President Joan Peppard will explore the purpose, challenges and future of the framework. More information HERE.
Ahead of launching a new 5-year action plan to tackle Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) the European Commission has opened a consultation to collect stakeholders’ perceptions on a range of available actions. The consultation is open to all citizens and will close on 28th April 2017. More information HERE.
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), the USA’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a collection of scientists from national medicines regulators have each made new and important interventions to current debates about biosimilar interchangeability. The public positioning comes as an increasing number of biosimilar products coming to market in an environment where cost pressures highlight the need to utilise less expensive medicinal products where this can be done without detriment to patient treatment or safety.
In the case of small and large chemical medicines, moving patients to cheaper generic versions of the originator product has been a long-standing and successful means to reduce a health system’s medicines bills. In the case of biologic medicines however, the level to which a reference product and a biosimilar product can be considered interchangeable is sometimes made subject of debate. Because of this, healthcare professional organisations and regulators are increasingly making known their positions on the matter.
The USA’s medicines regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), opened the new year by publishing long-awaited draft guidelines on the interchangeability of a biosimilar with its reference product. The draft guidelines call for developers of biosimilars to produce a switching study (or studies) to demonstrate that the risk in terms of safety or diminished efficacy between a biosimilar and its reference product is not greater than the risk of using the reference product without such switch. In short, an interchangeable product is expected to produce the same clinical result as the reference product in any given patient. Achieving the status of ‘interchangeable’ is especially important in the USA as only such designated biosimilars can then be substituted for the reference product by a pharmacist without the intervention of a health care provider.
The FDA consultation is open for comments by interested parties until the 20th March 2017. The guidelines can be found HERE.
Meanwhile, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has made an intervention into the current discussions on biosimilar interchangeability and substitution by publishing a formal position paper. The paper embraces the opportunity biosimilars provide in keeping medicines costs sustainable for health systems, but also strongly emphasises the need for physicians to retain authority in respect to any switch of a patient between reference and biosimilar product, or between different biosimilars.
The ESMO position paper states: “Automatic substitution, which might be practice for generics, should… be avoided in the field of biosimilars. Interchangeability and switching should only be permitted if: (1) the physician is well-informed about the products; (2) the patient is fully briefed by the physician and (3) a nurse is closely monitoring the changes and tracking any adverse events“.
The ESMO position paper is available HERE.
Also entering the debate, a collection of authors drawn from the European medicines regulatory community have recently published a paper in the Journal BioDrugs with the statement: “Our conclusion is that a switch between comparable versions of the same active substance approved in accordance with EU legislation is not expected to trigger or enhance immunogenicity. On the basis of current knowledge, it is unlikely and very difficult to substantiate that two products, comparable on a population level, would have different safety or efficacy in individual patients upon a switch. Our conclusion is that biosimilars licensed in the EU are interchangeable“.
The authors are drawn from regulatory agencies in Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway. Their article is available HERE.
Finally, the European Commission continue to follow matters closely, and to assist national discussions has published a “Q&A” document about biosimilars in seven different languages. Entitled “What I need to know about Biosimilar Medicines – Information for patients“, the document seeks to explain in simple language such issues as extrapolation and provide links to reputable sources of further information. The published languages are English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish. The document is available HERE.
EJHP: are nanosimilars evaluated and substituted correctly?The online first edition of the European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (EJHP) has published an open access article describing a study into the drug selection and dispensing behaviour of hospital pharmacists of intravenous iron products including iron sucrose and iron sucrose similar, with special emphasis on substitution and interchangeability in France and Spain.
The article is available HERE.
EAHP and GS1 collaborate on special bedside scanning session in Berlin
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) is delighted to be collaborating with barcode standards organisation GS1 in facilitating a special session of the annual GS1 healthcare conference on the topic of bedside scanning. Taking place in Berlin on Tuesday 4th April, the event will learn from the experiences of Gelre Hospital in the Netherlands in taking up the patient safety and life-saving practice of bedside scanning, how challenges to implementation were overcome, and the results achieved. Ms Peggy Staver, Director of Product Integrity at Pfizer, will give a manufacturer’s perspective about how postulated barriers to barcoding medicines to the primary package can be surmounted.
GS1’s healthcare conference is free for hospital pharmacists in practice and contains many more sessions of interest to practitioners over its 3 day programme including sessions focusing on traceability, patient safety, supply chain management, the Falsified Medicines Directive, and medical devices. The conference also includes poster sessions, case study expositions and side visits to various exemplar hospitals in the Berlin area.
More information about the conference programme and how to register is available HERE.
