A “simplified and improved” system will funnel all complaints about medical advertising through the one organisation
The TGA is set to become the one-stop-shop for handling advertising complaints for medicines and medical devices.
These new responsibilities come after the federal government accepted recommendations from an expert panel review of medicines and medical devices regulation.
The regulation process of health and medical products in Australia has come under fire for being unwieldy, confusing, and allowing dodgy companies to slip through the cracks between different regulatory groups.
A media release from the health department said the current complaints-handling arrangements were “complex for consumers and businesses to navigate and often do not deliver timely or consistent decisions”.
Instead, this new “simplified and improved” advertising system would help clinicians, advertisers, and consumers by funnelling all complaints through the one organisation, it said.
The hope is that it would also speed up the complaints process.
“A timely response to advertising complaints benefits the Australian community by helping consumers to avoid both wasting money on therapeutic goods that will not help them and, more importantly, not seeking medical attention when they really should.”
ASMI CEO Deon Schoombie said the group was happy with the direction complaints handling was going, “however ASMI remains concerned about the removal of pre-approvals prior to the effectiveness of new measures being demonstrated”.
As well as culling advertising pre-approvals, public-health expert Professor Ken Harvey said there were additional concerns about the lack of transparency in TGA’s current handling of complaints, failure to use the current sanctions available and poor handling of current post-marketing surveillance.
