The European Assisted Conception Consortium was set up in 2005 to support the implementation of the Tissues and Cells Directives in the field of reproductive medicine.

The group has clinicians, laboratory scientists and regulators as members. It has a website, a web forum, regular notes to members, a recently launched newsletter, two meetings a year of speakers and workshops and regular meetings with the European Commission. On February 12th it held a full members meeting in Brussels. The members explored their experiences in implementing the Directives with presentations from Italy, Slovenia and Greece. The European Commission presented its work on the development of a single coding system for tissues and cells in the EU.The afternoon was taken up by two workshops, one addressed 'Inspecting against the Directive' and the other explored 'Adverse Incident Reporting'. Deirdre Fehily, Italian National Transplant Centre, was invited to present the Eustite project during the first of these workshops. In discussion following the presentation the group raised various issues specific to the field of reproductive medicine which require appropriate interpretation and common approaches to implementation. The group was invited to identify 'hot spots' and to propose appropriate points of guidance to inspectors which could be incorporated in the inspection guidelines produced as part of the Eustite project. Gianfranco Spiteri, who is working with WHO on the vigilance and surveillance aspects of the Eustite project was invited to attend the meeting and participated in the second workshop on Adverse event reporting. It represented a very useful opportunity for him to understand the current situation regarding reporting systems in this field and he made very useful contacts in the group which will facilitate further discussion.