Germany's leading device expert moves to new position
This article was originally published in Clinica
Dr Gert Schorn, head of the medical devices regulatory sector at the German Ministry of Health (BMG), has moved to other responsibilities within the ministry. Dr Schorn, who enjoys a reputation as one of the key figures in the development of German and European law on medical devices (see Clinica No 918, p 4), became head of the sector regulating pharmaceutical use and pharmacists on August 1.
Issues surrounding the use and integration of e-commence in the German pharmaceutical sector will be among Dr Schorn's key responsibilities. He will retain a link with the medical devices sector inasmuch as devices are sold through pharmacists.
His successor in the medical devices sector is Hans-Georg Will, who has been with the German pharmaceutical industry association (BfArM) since 1998. He will additionally retain his post within the BfArM until a successor is appointed.
Dr Schorn decided to move positions, leaving the division he himself set up and headed, as he found his demands for adequate staffing were being constantly overlooked. Carrying out the workload imposed by EU regulations and maintaining sufficient support for global harmonisation initiatives became impossible . The lack of resource allocation is all the more difficult to reconcile, given Germany's importance in the world medical device industry, where it is the third largest manufacturing country after the US and Japan. Moreover, the German medical device industry is not too much smaller than the pharmaceutical industry.
The list of Dr Schorn's achievements is a long one. He entered the BMG in 1982 to oversee the regulation of medical devices and has co-ordinated the transposition in Germany of all four EU medical device directives and the recently enacted text on medical devices with integrated blood products. Much of Germany's own body of medical device regulations was conceived and developed by him. Together with Norbert Anselmann of the European Commission, Dr Schorn is viewed as one of the co-founders of EU medical device legislation.