FDA Builds Cross-Border Partnerships to Advance Regulatory Science

Dec. 17, 2013
As the FDA embraces its international role in today’s complex regulatory environment, the agency fully accepts the need to think and act globally.

During the plenary session address for the ISPE Annual Meeting in November, Janet Woodcock had pointedly noted that the "FDA is no longer just a domestic agency."

U.S. FDA officials attend annual, international meetings which become an important forum for the exchange of information, views and regulatory strategies among the chief executives of major and like-minded medicines regulatory agencies.

All regulatory agencies have to contend with the huge changes in the size and nature of international trade caused by emerging markets, developing economies, and increased cross-border flows of goods, information and capital -- and collaboration helps advance regulatory science, the road to even better protection and the collective public health.

Read Margaret Hamburg, M.D., FDA Commissioner's blog post