A supply shortage of dronabinol occurred between December 2023 and February 2024, forcing chronic pain patients to discontinue this treatment. We assessed the impact of this shortage on patients in our hospital.

During coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the incidence rate of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in hospitalized patients seemed higher than before the pandemic. Severe inflammation triggered by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was cited as an explanation. We aimed to determine whether COVID-19 infection was associated with a higher risk of ADRs compared to other infectious diseases.

The safety profile of a rechallenge with BRAF inhibitors (BRAFi) or a combination of BRAF and MEK inhibitors (MEKi) following an adverse drug reaction (ADR) remains largely unexplored.

In France, the short-stay activities of public and private sector healthcare facilities have been financed since 2004 by activity-based pricing (T2A). The principle is to allow for payment determined primarily by the nature and volume of activities. T2A has enabled a major transformation compared to the old financing system, chiefly for public sector facilities that used to operate under a general allocation, and convergence between payment methods in the public and private sectors. However, official reports and public pronouncements by many hospital healthcare stakeholders have also highlighted the limits of this method of financing, leading to several reform projects. With that in mind, round table 3 of the Giens Workshops, including experts from academia and/or hospitals, institutions, and industry, questioned the impact of the new T2A reforms on access to innovative health care products in hospitals. After scoping out the issue and drawing up observations, the round table proposed six general recommendations that would be avenues for improving access to innovative health care products for hospital service users.

The opioid epidemic has emerged in the USA in the late 1990s and widespread to Canada, Australia, and the UK to a lesser extent in the more recent years. At the European level, several studies performed in different European countries have highlighted that prescription opioid use increased substantially over the last decade, and several proxies for misuse show a parallel increasing trend. The French addictovigilance experience on opioid analgesics is a good example of a specific dedicated monitoring, taking into account in a global and multisource perspective, patterns of utilization, population involved in problematic use, ways of acquisition and health complications. The added value of this data triangulation is illustrated by the recent data on tramadol and oxycodone. The addictovigilance monitoring is particularly relevant to identify early signals of potential problematic use and to assess the impact of campaigns for opioid analgesics rational use and regulatory changes.

Medical analysis laboratories play an essential role in medical diagnosis, with their results influencing up to 70% of decisions. This means that the quality of laboratory services is a key factor in the quality of medical care. However, certification and accreditation are not yet compulsory in Morocco, and only the Guide to the Good Execution of Medical Biology Analyses (GBEA) published in 2011 governs the organisation of laboratories. The Blood Transfusion and Hemovigilance Service (STSH) at the Ibn Sina University Hospital (CHUIS) in Rabat has embarked on an ISO 9001:2015 certification process, with the aim of improving its performance and satisfying its interested parties. This process, which was launched in 2018, was carried out in two main phases. The first phase consisted of complying with current regulations, while the second phase involved an evaluation based on the ISO 9001:2015 standard. In accordance with the logic of the Deming wheel, the department developed its quality policy, set its objectives, and undertook staff training and awareness activities. The processes, along with the associated risks and opportunities, have been identified and represented. The documentation system, as well as the system for reporting and handling non-conformities, has been implemented and dematerialised. Performance and activity indicators have been defined for each process. Finally, the customer feedback system has been expanded to include all interested parties, thus allowing for an evaluation of their perceptions and the identification of areas for improvement. Despite the global pandemic of COVID-19, this work has successfully integrated ISO 9001:2015 into STSH's practices, with compliance being declared by a certification body in 2022.

4P medicine (personalized, preventive, predictive, and participatory) is experiencing a remarkable rise, and pharmacogenetics is an essential part of it. However, several obstacles are hindering its deployment. This round table brought together a group of experts to take stock of the situation, reflecting on ways to facilitate the prescription of these tests and the dissemination of the results on a national scale. The experts looked at the methods of prescribing and communicating pharmacogenetic data in the current situation as well as in the coming years, with the arrival of artificial intelligence software. The questions relating to the reimbursement of tests - as topical as ever - were also discussed, as this is a way to allow all patients to access these tests. Numerous recommendations have been formulated on these various points, aimed at facilitating prescription management for healthcare professionals, and ensuring the retention and use of the results throughout the patient's life. Finally, better patient information was recommended, as well as strengthening the involvement of healthcare professionals and industry stakeholders in this process, with insistence on the necessary training and commitment to ensure its success.

Metformin-associated lactic acidosis (MALA) is a rare but serious adverse drug reaction (ADR). The aim of the study was to identify clinical situations associated with the onset of MALA in patients hospitalised in the Nord Pas de Calais regional intensive care units (ICUs), and to assess its preventability.

Over the past decade, new in vitro biological models have emerged which can reproduce certain characteristics of human physiology and pathologies. From organoids to organs-on-chips, these new technologies are currently revolutionizing the entire chain of research and development in pharmacology. All stakeholders are thus involved, from academic laboratories to pharmaceutical companies, start-ups, and assessment agencies. By providing better predictability, these new human biomimetic models also help address societal and ethical challenges regarding the place and use of animals in biomedical research. In this context, participants at the Ateliers de Giens (Giens Workshops) roundtable wished to examine the issues related to these new technologies with their various expertise and, given the stakes involved in the medicine and pharmacology of the future, formulate several recommendations aimed at strengthening the national structuring of the academic and industrial sector, therefore accelerating the development and validation of these new models.

France has been engaged in a legal and organisational transition for many years. It has had to adapt its national framework to the legal requirements of personal data protection, European ambitions and international competition. From the Data Protection Act of 1978 to the Healthcare System Transformation Act of 2019, reforms have strengthened requirements in terms of personal data protection, while opening the way to innovative uses. Recent European regulations, such as the AI Act (2024) and the European Health Data Area (2024), aim to reinforce this dynamic, ensuring a secure, transparent and competitive framework for the sharing and use of health data. How can we ensure that the re-use of healthcare data is truly effective, while respecting the fundamental rights of citizens? How can we reconcile national and European ambitions with the technical and organisational realities of the healthcare system, in clinical and research teams, and as close as possible to patients and users in our territories? These questions are essential, because access to and use of health data are seen as major levers for improving the quality of care, supporting innovation and boosting the competitiveness of the French healthcare system. The impact study on the 2019 reform stresses that the transformation of the healthcare system will have to be based on taking better account of the needs of patients and professionals by encouraging local initiatives. In this context, France faces a priority to establish greater coordination between the national and local levels, while preserving the trust of users. This precious trust is essential if we are to make the transition to achieving national and European objectives for the scientific and economic use of data.

The drug authorization process is shifting towards a policy aimed at shortening time-to-market. While this policy facilitates early access to new treatments, it can also result in potentially insufficient knowledge of both efficacy and safety at the time of marketing. The latter is particularly true for long-term outcomes or in specific populations (e.g., children and the elderly). Yet, French pharmacoepidemiology is currently not designed to address these challenges, despite recognized expertise. In this context, we aim: (i) to define a strategy for strengthening pharmacoepidemiology in France; and (ii) to identify the associated human, technical, and financial requirements to ensure its success. In this paper, we present the French Pharmacoepidemiology Initiative (https://frenchpharmacoepi.org/), i.e. a network of independent academic teams to complement existing institutions. It will provide coordinated expertise and a workforce to meet national and regional needs for pharmacoepidemiological monitoring and drug-related decision-making. Leveraging the existing expertise of university hospital pharmacoepidemiology units would enable rapid operational deployment to inform the decisions and policies of national regulatory agencies.

Since the beginning of the century, the USA have been experiencing an opioid epidemic characterised by high levels of prescription opioid use. While extensive North American literature on the topic has been published and several public health measures implemented attempting to address the problem, in Europe addiction research, especially literature focusing on misuse of medicines, lags far behind. France is an exception: it is the only European country that has established a nationwide specific system to monitor misuse of legal and illegal psychoactive substances, an activity that has been named addictovigilance. Thanks to the combined use of several data sources, the French addictovigilance system has, in its three decades of existence, proven to be effective in the early identification and assessment of addictovigilance signals, providing real-world evidence to support the conception and monitoring of public health measures to minimise the health risks posed by psychoactive substance misuse in France.

The issue of assessing the effectiveness of health technologies (drugs, devices, etc.) through observational studies is becoming increasingly important as registration and market access agencies consider them in their evaluation process. In this context, observational studies must be able to provide real demonstrations of a level of reliability comparable to those produced by the conventional randomized controlled trial (RCT) approach. The objective of the roundtable was to establish the acceptability criteria for an observational study (non-randomized, non-interventional study) to be able to provide these demonstrations, and possibly serve as a confirmatory study for registration and market access authorities, the construction of therapeutic strategies or the development of recommendations. In order to do this, the study must be a real confirmatory study respecting the hypothetical-deductive approach and guaranteeing the absence of HARKing and p-hacking by attesting to the establishment of a protocol and a statistical analysis plan, recorded before any inferential analysis. It must also be part of a formalized approach to causal inference and demonstrate that it correctly identifies the causal estimand sought. The study should ensure that there is no residual confusion bias by taking into account all confounding factors affecting the comparison, which should be determined by a formal approach (such as a graphical causality approach, DAGs). Residual confusion bias diagnoses by forgery and nullification analysis should be non-existent. The study shall be at low risk of bias, in particular selection bias, among others by using a target test emulation design. Overall type I error risk should be strictly controlled. The absence of selective publication of results and selection bias should be ensured.

In line with the spirit of the Giens workshops, this article reports on the recommended evolution of the Ethics Committees (CPPs) and the Committees for Research Ethics (CER) in France. These committees play a crucial role in the ethical evaluation of clinical research projects, a process that has become more complex, particularly in view of recent legislative, regulatory and methodological developments. This reflection highlights the current challenges faced by the CPPs, including the increasing workload, the complexity of the issues to be addressed and the need for better use of their resources. To address this, several recommendations are proposed. These include improving support to sponsors prior to submission, simplifying administrative tasks for CPP members and improving IT tools. The article also highlights the need for continuous evaluation of the activities of the CPPs to contribute to the quality and consistency of their opinions, as well as the importance of making this activity more attractive to qualified professionals, by offering them adequate compensation and professional recognition. For the benefit of all involved in health research, there is a strong desire to develop a single document management system accessible to all and inclusive of relevant information and document templates. Regarding the CERs, which currently operate without a legal framework, the proposition is that their development should take place under conditions of compliance with essential principles of collegiality, transparency and appropriate management of conflict of interest. Finally, it appeared necessary that the National Commission for Research Involving the Human Person (CNRIPH) be given adequate resources to carry out its tasks effectively, including the coordination of the CPPs and the development of appropriate training programs for their members. These recommendations aim to improve the operating conditions of the CPPs and CERs, ensuring the ethics of the research undertaken, as well as the quality of their results.