New visual identity, web/e-mail addresses and organisation chart of the European Medicines Agency
This communication is intended to inform all interested parties about several important changes the European Medicines Agency will be introducing shortly.
New visual identity
On 8 December 2009, we will officially launch our new visual identity, comprising a new logo, new colour chart, new typography and rebranded materials based on these elements.
We are giving you advance notice of this so that you are not surprised when you start to see new documents and other materials emerging from the Agency that do not bear the familiar ‘EMEA’ logo.
We have created the new visual identity as part of a wider effort to improve the quality and consistency of our communications with partners, stakeholders and the public. The main benefit is that our communications materials will now be based on professionally designed templates, and have a more harmonised look and feel than our current materials.
The cornerstone of our new identity is a new logo we have created that reflects more accurately the nature and character of the Agency, which has evolved significantly in the 15 years since it, and the original logo, were created.
Please visit our public website on 8 December for further details about our new visual identity and materials.
Still the European Medicines Agency, but no longer ‘the EMEA’ – and not ‘the EMA’ either
While you may be familiar with us as ‘the EMEA’, many of our partners and stakeholders over the years have told us they find the acronym confusing, firstly because it does not accurately reflect our name ("What does the second 'e' stand for?") and secondly because it is an acronym widely used in the business community to mean ‘Europe, Middle East and Africa’, which can cause some confusion.
Since it is important to us that we communicate clear and unambiguous messages about who we are, we have decided that we will no longer be using the EMEA acronym in our communications, and it does not feature in our new logo.
Please note that we will not be calling ourselves ‘the EMA’ either. Although this may seem a more obvious acronym, it is not one that feels right for us yet. We may reconsider our position at a later stage, if ‘EMA’ evolves naturally into a commonly accepted and widely used shorthand for our organisation. Until then, however, we will be using only our full name (or 'the Agency', for short) in our communications.
(For technical reasons, we need to use some kind of abbreviation in our document references and our website and e-mail addresses. We will exceptionally use ‘EMA’ in these defined cases.)
New ‘ema.europa.eu’ address for our website and e-mails
On 8 December 2009, all Agency website and e-mail addresses will change from ‘emea.europa.eu’ to ‘ema.europa.eu’, as a consequence of our decision to discontinue our use of the acronym 'EMEA'.
From that date onwards, the address of our public website will be www.ema.europa.eu and our e-mail addresses will take the form name.surname@ema.europa.eu
Please update your website bookmarks, address books, contacts databases and other resources accordingly.
New organisation chart
Over the past three months, we have been implementing a series of changes to our internal organisation, aimed at improving the functioning of the Agency and the way in which we deliver our core tasks. The new structure and allocation of responsibilities will be made public on 8 December 2009.
Key changes relate to the two units responsible for medicines for human use that have been re-formed and re-named to become ‘Human Medicines Development and Evaluation’ (formerly 'Pre-authorisation Unit') and ‘Patient Health Protection’ (formerly 'Post-authorisation Unit'). Staff members dealing with veterinary medicines have been re-grouped in one single sector responsible for all areas of veterinary medicines. In addition, a single sector has also been formed to manage product data and documentation related to applications for both human and veterinary medicines.
Overall, the changes to our organisational structure will ensure more accountability at various management levels, and will allow us to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in our core activities.
Further information is available in a press release published on 5 October 2009.
New public website (in early 2010)
A further, major initiative we are undertaking as part of our efforts to improve our communications is to completely redesign our public website (currently at www.emea.europa.eu).
Scheduled for launch in early 2010, our new website will offer much-improved navigation and search functionality, and content will be structured more logically and intuitively. It will also be compliant with our new visual identity.
In designing the new website, we have carefully considered the feedback we have received from you, our partners and stakeholders, through surveys and other channels over the past two years. Thanks to your input, we are confident that our redesigned website will overcome many of the weaknesses identified with the current site, and will offer a greatly improved user-experience for all Agency audiences.
EMEA
http://www.emea.europa.eu/pdfs/general/direct/74766509en.pdf
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