Singapore: Health Sciences Authority's (HSA) Asia Regulatory Conference 2013 saw Singapore and Dutch regulators sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaboratively develop regulations associated with health products.

The MoU was signed by Associate Professor John Lim, CEO, has, and Professor Hubert Leufkens, chairman, Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB), and witnessed by Dr Amy Khor, Minister of State for Health and Manpower, Singapore.

The MoU is expected to further enhance access to safe and effective medicines, and advance the services relating to public health in order to meet the needs of the populations. The MoU was signed between HSA and the Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB), Netherlands, on the sidelines of the conference.

The MoU aims to shore up collaboration between the two agencies by strengthening regulatory science as a discipline fostering evidence based and harmonised decision making on medicinal products. It also plans to share pharmacovigilance and risk management strategies between the two bodies and facilitate collaboration on the improvement and harmonization of methods on decision making in the area of benefit-risk assessment of medicinal products.

The MoU also seeks to help in the exchange of information on pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine and stimulate joint education and training of regulatory experts, including Master and PhD students.