The ‘Hospital exemption’ is specific to ATMPs. It has been established by the ATMP regulation (Article 28), which modifies the European Union (EU) general pharmaceutical legislation (Article 3.7 Directive 2001/83/EC). “Advanced therapy medicinal products which are prepared on a non-routine basis according to specific quality standards, and used within the same Member State in a hospital under the exclusive professional responsibility of a medical practitioner, in order to comply with an individual medical prescription for a custom-made product for an individual patient” are excluded from the scope of EU general pharmaceutical legislation. This means that they are not submitted to the standard regulatory pathway as other ATMPs, i.e. the mandatory centralised procedure of marketing authorisation of ATMPs and its linked requirements.
Moreover, some requirements for exempted ATMPs are established by European Union law which requires Member States to implement them at National levels:
- The manufacturing of exempted ATMPs shall be authorised by the competent authority of the relevant Member State.
- National traceability and pharmacovigilance requirements as well as specific quality standards for exempted ATMPs have to be equivalent to those applicable to non-exempted ATMPs that are fully regulated at the EU level.
Apart from such an EU definition and the above-mentioned EU requirements, exempted ATMPs are regulated at National levels. It has resulted in a huge heterogeneity of rules applicable to exempted ATMPs across Member States.
On such a basis, the main issue at stake is the potential competition between two regulatory pathways’ types: the mandatory centralised marketing authorisation and the linked requirements for non-exempted ATMPs as governed by EU law, and the various National regulations at National level for exempted ATMPs. Indeed, in the spirit of the ATMP regulation, the National rules on exempted ATMPs should not undermined the EU rules related to the quality and safety of non-exempted ATMPs (Recital 6 of the ATMP regulation).
Actors, including the European Commission, the EMA, and National medicines agencies are aware of the issues raised by hospital exemption for ATMPs. In that context, the European Commission has started on new study on this topic at the end of 2023, the 2023 European Commission’s proposal for a revision of the general pharmaceutical legislation covers the hospital exemption, and a revision of the ATMP regulation can be considered. Nevertheless, the issues at stake are politically very sensitive. Strong conflicting views may slow down any revision of the EU legislation, which process is based on a co-decision by the European Parliament (representing EU citizens) and the council of Ministers (composed of representatives of the Governments of each Member State of the EU) on the basis on the proposal from the European Commission.