– Written by John Salter, PHUSE EMEA Director

Following our formula of meeting face-to-face prior to the US Connect and then straight after, the PHUSE Board had the opportunity to cover both immediate and long-term strategic reviews and consider items relevant to the US Connect.

The Board generally meet monthly via Teams to ensure PHUSE is still delivering on our core mission – to share ideas to enhance the life sciences community – as well as keeping on top of the latest news and technological advances to meet the needs of our membership.

With the recent change of administration in the US, there was discussion around our ongoing collaboration with the FDA. As things evolve with the changes at all levels across the regulator, we need to be well placed to adapt accordingly. We are also looking at increasing our collaborative space with the EMA and similar regulatory organisations outside of the US as part of this transformation. As ever, we look to our membership for support and input – we continue to build on the fantastic efforts of our Working Groups (kudos to Chris Price, our Working Groups Director, and his many teams).

We also spent time discussing and developing our diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) approach; there will be a continuation of our efforts to date as well as an alignment with pharmaverse on future endeavours. As part of the US Connect, the Programming Heads Council discussed needs for programming as a whole, and, subsequently, high-level ideas on what PHUSE as an organisation needs to focus on.

For the post-conference meetings, we naturally debriefed on the event, both positive and negative. We have some ideas/plans that will come to fruition over the next few months, and be incorporated into the EU and APAC events. We are also waiting on the Connect surveys that were sent to attendees so we can further examine ways we can improve. PHUSE is not a static organisation, and we depend on our members to keep the momentum.

Looking towards 2026, we have our new Connect in Hyderabad in February 2026 – work is already in progress to make sure this meets the quality our membership has come to expect from our Connect offering.

I would finally like to take this opportunity to introduce our new Education Director, Anne-Sophie Bekx.

Anne-Sophie is Head, Submissions & Regulatory Intelligence at Janssen Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) and has been actively involved with PHUSE since 2017, as a Posters Stream Chair, a Co-Chair and our EU Connect 2024 Chair in Strasbourg.

I would like to thank our contributors, sponsors and members for their continued support of PHUSE – we are a volunteer-driven organisation and could not do what we do without your valuable input. We look forward to working with you all through the years to come.