Medical Device Regulation in International Perspective: EU IMDRF Chair in 2023

Description: IMDRF (International Medical Regulators Forum) is a voluntary group of global medical device regulators who have come together to build on the strong foundational work of the Global Harmonization Task Force on Medical Devices (GHTF) and aims to accelerate international medical device regulatory harmonization and convergence. Current members are Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, Japan, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom and United States, with WHO and Argentina as observers.
Chair of IMDRF rotates annually among its members. In 2023, the EU is chairing IMDRF. Next to standard chair obligations (hosting of IMDRF Management Committee and attached open sessions etc.), the EU will also deploy adjacent initiatives, such as workshops and other stakeholder activities.
In this session, people directly involved the program for the EU IMDRF-chair will share the background of their deployed or planned activities.
At the submission of the abstracts (Sept 2022), it is rather early days in the planning of EU-IMDRF activities for 2023. However, EU Commission has announced that around the two IMDRF Management Committee meetings (usually organized in March and September), they are planning a series of activities in cooperation with member states, notified bodies and industry associations. It would make sense to ‘earmark’ a session in the EuroConvergence for the IMDRF activities that will take place ‘around the corner’.
In the session, representatives of EU Commission, member states, notified bodies and industry associations will be ‘taking the temperature’ and analyse the progress of the harmonization and convergence activities of IMDRF. In their contributions they will focus on the areas that EU will highlight during their IMDR-Chair-year.