Wirthumer-Hoche becomes Vice-Chair of EMA

Christa Wirthumer-Hoche, PhD, head of the Austrian Medicines and Medical Devices Agency, has been elected Vice-Chair of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) by the Management Board for a three-year period. She succeeds Walter Schwerdtfeger, PhD, following his retirement as President of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices.

Wirthumer-Hoche was co-chair of the 2014 EuroMeeting of the Drug Information Association (DIA). According to DIA, she studied biochemistry and graduated from the Technical University, Vienna in 1981, and did her doctoral thesis at the Institute for Medical Physiology, graduating in 1983, after which she joined the Austrian National Institute for Quality Control of Drugs, focusing on the assessment of quality documentation. From 1998 to 2005, she was Head of the Licensing Division for medicinal products, in the Unit for Pharmaceutical Affairs in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and Women.

When the new Austrian Agency was founded in January 2006, she was Head of the Institute for Marketing Authorisation and Lifecycle Management of Medicinal Products, and was appointed Head of the Austrian Medicines and Medical Devices Agency on 1 October 2013.

Wirthumer-Hoche has also been involved in various European committees and working groups, including the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products (CPMP). In1999 she was appointed by the European Commission as Co-ordinator for the CTD Implementation in Europe (ICH-IWG). She is the Austrian Delegate in the Coordination Group for Mutual Recognition and Decentralised Procedures for human MPs (CMD-h) and chair of the Joint Working Group on ASMF-procedures.