PREMIER: Prioritisation and risk evaluation of medicines in the environment

Active ingredients from medicines can get into the environment through a variety of routes, and once there they can prove harmful to wildlife and ecosystems. In the EU, new medicines are required to undergo an environmental risk assessment (ERA). However, so far just a handful of the 1900 or so active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in use have been assessed.

The aim of PREMIER is to deliver a framework for assessing and characterising the environmental risks of APIs. This framework could be used to prioritise and screen older ('legacy') APIs that have never been through an ERA. It could also be used to pick up potential environmental risks in new APIs that are still under development.

We are 6 months into this 6-year project. My task on this project is to build a computer system that brings together the data and requirements of the 10 pharmaceutical companies, 11 universities and research organisations, and 3 SMEs involved in this project. I will talk about the complexities of undertaking a project such as this, and share stories about the ways in which people from different backgrounds think differently and work together to co-design a computer system that hopes to benefit a wide range of different stakeholders.

Join the seminar on Zoom

Passcode: 223393