# \[e-lek\] French Regulator maintains confusing brand names

**URL:** https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-lek-french-regulator-maintains-confusing-brand-names/43446
**Category:** e-lek
**Created:** [February 25, 2017, 7:58am UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-lek-french-regulator-maintains-confusing-brand-names/43446 "2017-02-25T07:58:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![LiliyaEZ](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/user_avatar/talk.edrugplus.org/liliyaez/32/22_2.png) [@LiliyaEZ](https://talk.edrugplus.org/u/LiliyaEZ)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2017, 7:58am UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-lek-french-regulator-maintains-confusing-brand-names/43446/1 "2017-02-25T07:58:39Z")

</div>

E-DRUG: French Regulator maintains confusing brand names  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear E-druggers,

Prescrire urges the French Health Products Agency (ANSM) to revise its  
draft recommendations on drug brand names to maximise patient safety,  
abandon national of labelling that causes confusion and medication errors.

The public consultation organised by the ANSM provides an opportunity to  
point out that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) guideline on brand names  
does not give sufficient consideration to patients' interests or to human  
factors at each stage of brand name development, at both industry and  
administrative level.

Prescrire and the International Medication Safety Network (IMSN) have  
developed constructive proposals to shift the focus of European policy in  
this area towards patient safety, in particular the EMA and all national  
drug regulatory agencies should:

- publish a list of brand names that have led to name confusion;  
- facilitate the reporting of drug name errors by health professionals and  
patients;  
- adopt and publish a method for assessing the risk of confusion before  
marketing authorisation;  
- stop accepting umbrella brands;  
- adopt stricter standards for the naming of fixed-dose combinations;  
- revert to more prudent use of abbreviations and suffixes, as these lead  
to confusion;  
- involve patients in the search for improvements.

International nonproprietary names (INNs) are constructed using informative  
common stems. As a result, errors caused by confusion between INNs are less  
frequently reported than brand name confusion errors. It is therefore  
important to display INNs prominently on drug packaging.

The ANSM also mentioned that recommendations on drug labelling are  
currently being developed. Having systematically analysed the packaging of  
thousands of medicinal products, Prescrire is aware of the urgent need for  
higher drug packaging and labelling standards and encourage the ANSM to  
rapidly launch a public consultation on its draft recommendations on  
labelling.

More details at [http://english.prescrire.org/en/79/207/46302/5207/4785/](http://english.prescrire.org/en/79/207/46302/5207/4785/)  
SubReportDetails.aspx

Etienne Schmitt  
Hospital pharmacist - France  
Head of Prescrire Programme Preventing the Preventable  
E-mail: eschmitt@prescrire.org