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European Common Framework for Continuing Professional Development
in the Biomedical Sciences  

Developed by LifeTrain

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Developed by EMTRAIN in collaboration with the IMI Education and Training projects LifeTrain addresses how Continuing Professional Development (CPD) can be better coordinated to support biomedical research in Europe and achieve the goals of IMI. The IMI LifeTrain initiative brought together many excellent, but disparate, activities into a process towards a coherent common framework for CPD in Europe.

The essential components of LifeTrain are:

  1. The recognition of individual competence portfolios
  2. Stakeholder engagement
  3. Access to high quality professional training modules
  4. Workshops to reach consensus
  5. Publication of a position paper – A European common framework for CPD

LifeTrain is fully in line with the clear statement of Europe’s intent to regain leadership in biomedical research and to drive global excellence to serve the aim of providing required innovative health care solutions more effectively.

The European common framework for CPD consists of four charters ("agreed principles") – one for the professional/scientific bodies, one for the course providers, one for the employers, and one for the individual professional, and a series of key messages. This provides a holistic, harmonised approach to CPD. It recognises the importance of diversity to meet individual stakeholders’ needs without being prescriptive in how to develop and maintain professional competence in the biomedical sciences and the disciplines involved in or supporting medicines discovery, development, processing and/or usage.

Recently, the article "LifeTrain: towards a European framework for continuing professional development in biomedical sciences" was published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

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