The 30th Annual Meeting of the General European Official Medicines Control Laboratories Network (GEON) took place in Oslo, Norway, from 19 to 23 May 2025. Over 250 participants representing 61 official medicines control laboratories (OMCLs) from 41 countries participated, with the vast majority attending the event in person. The five-day meeting was hosted by the Norwegian Medical Products Agency (NOMA) and co-organised with the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM).
The event featured nine different sessions, each focusing on various critical topics. The General Session covered interactions between OMCLs and key stakeholders such as GMP inspectors, quality defect managers and quality assessors. Another focus was the concept of encouraging the development of specialised centres to help address testing needs across the network, with examples including the testing of gene therapy products, medical devices and radiopharmaceuticals. The closure of the last remaining laboratory in the network with specific competence in radiopharmaceuticals at the end of 2024 – due to budgetary constraints – highlights the critical importance of addressing this issue.
Environmental sustainability, which became the network’s fifth strategic goal last year, was also a key topic, with discussions on its practical implementation within OMCLs. Additionally, new proposals for amendments to the Mutual Joint Audit policy and closer collaboration with the World Health Organization were addressed.
Lastly, the membership of the GEON Advisory Group was renewed at the meeting, with four of the eight members being replaced by election, and Katerina Brezovska from the North Macedonian OMCL elected to the post of Chair by the newly composed group.
Additional highlights from the different sessions included the following points.
- The Pharmaceutical Session included the testing of Anti-Tampering Devices (ATDs) by OMCLs.
- The OMCL Falsified Medicines Working Group discussed preparations for the next Falsified Medicines Symposium scheduled for June 2026.
- The Mutual Recognition Procedure and the Decentralised Procedure (MRP/DCP) session presented and discussed examples of integrating risk signals provided by quality assessors during the pre-authorisation phase for planning post-market surveillance testing campaigns at national level.
- The Veterinary Batch Release Session included a focus on animal well-being through topics related to the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing (the 3R principles), supported by scientific presentations, and saw the renewal of the Veterinary Batch Release Network’s Advisory Group with a new election of members from the Slovak Republic and Poland, completing the group which also includes members from Belgium and Germany.
- The three sessions related to human Official Control Authority Batch Release (OCABR) (blood session, vaccine session and common OCABR session) featured numerous presentations highlighting the importance of collaboration within the network for the resilience and reliance of the batch release system.
- In the General Biological session scientific topics relevant for OMCLs concerning biologicals beyond activities related to the OCABR programmes were presented and discussed.
See also: