• Risk Management: A Primer for Lean Quality Assurance

    6 January, 2015 Gina Guido-Redden Co-Founder, Coda Corp USA

    In this article, we will take a closer look at what is becoming perhaps the most useful tool in the belt of today’s quality professionals: risk management.

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  • Stedman Graham Steps Out of Oprah’s Shadow, Shares Secret to His Success

    30 December, 2014 Cindy Fazzi, Editor, MasterControl Insider

    Stedman Graham, CEO of S. Graham and Associates and a best-selling author of motivational books, shared the secret to his success. No, it’s not Oprah, though he’s widely known for his long-time relationship with one of the world’s most famous media personalities. 

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  • Basics: Documenting a Real QMS

    18 December, 2014 T. Dan Nelson, Consultant

    Using ISO  parlance, a management system is designed to achieve objectives.   In the case of a quality management system (QMS), the most basic objective is to succeed by satisfying customers.  A QMS is a system designed to satisfy customers by providing them with timely, quality products and services.

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  • Five Common Issues that could Jeopardize Training Compliance

    9 December, 2014 Cindy Fazzi, Staff Writer

    If your company is regulated, then you know that it’s not enough to have your quality standards on paper. You have to implement and integrate them into your daily operations and prove to regulators that your standards and policies work.

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  • Two Keys to Prosperous B2B Customer Partnerships

    4 December, 2014 James Jardine, Marketing Communications

    It may be a trite and simplistic aphorism, but it’s one that’s hard to live by in a competitive business world. Yet the companies that stay true to it are always the most successful. That’s because a company that provides products and services to other businesses is only as valuable as the value it supplies. Think of it this way: ‘why’ a company does what it does is even more important than ‘how’ the company does it or ‘what’ it is actually doing.

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  • It's Not Just You: FDA Regulatory Requirements Really Are Increasing

    20 November, 2014 Alexander Gaffney, RAC

    The work of regulatory professionals working in the United States is notoriously tough. There are thousands of regulations to know, scientific knowledge to understand, colleagues to convince and regulators to placate. And now new data supports a commonly held belief: Your job really is getting more difficult every year.

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  • MasterControl Says “Go Live” to Localized Websites

    6 November, 2014 Jason Clegg, Director of Marketing, MasterControl

    At its core, website translation is a process that allows everyone across the globe to access the same opportunities and/or products in their own languages. This is especially important to companies like MasterControl that are expanding in to international markets.

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  • From Good to Great – The One Skill Great CRAs Possess

    23 October, 2014 Holly Deiaco-Smith, MS

    Don’t get me wrong, these skills are important and they are point of entry for a good CRA. These skills are expected as a minimum set of skills to be hired for the job of CRA but they are not the skills that differentiate a great CRA. 

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  • Why Do Corrective Actions Fail?

    23 September, 2014 Ed Grounds, President Integrated Solution Providers Software, Inc.

    Each year, the most popular learning course we provide is targeted at developing the skills necessary for our customers’ associates to implement their corrective action programs effectively and efficiently. Throughout the years, we have been asked the same question hundreds of times, “What are the most common reasons corrective actions fail?” Usually this question is asked during the corrective action learning session by a management team member hoping that we will deliver the message to the other team members that they are failing. Normally, we turn the question back around to the group and ask them why they think their corrective action program fails. The most common answers we hear are: limited time, resources, training, or not knowing which tools to use.

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  • Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Corporate Compliance Program: A Holistic Approach

    21 October, 2014 Brian A. Dahl Dahl, Compliance Consulting

    Now more than ever, pharmaceutical companies must not only have an effective corporate compliance program in place, but senior management and boards of directors at these companies must ensure that they evaluate the effectiveness of those programs. The best reason to evaluate the effectiveness of your compliance program is so that you know whether or not the program is managing the particular risks facing your company. If you are responsible for protecting your company from risk, shouldn’t you want to know that your compliance program is working?

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  • Choosing the Right Drug Name: How to Increase Your Chances for Approval

    4 September, 2014 Susan M. Proulx, President, Med-ERRS

    The pharmaceutical industry is all too familiar with how exceedingly challenging it can be to achieve a viable trademark that is accepted by the health authorities, especially if obtaining a global mark is the end goal. Over the past few years, health authorities in several countries have been developing their proprietary name guidances. In the last six months alone, both Health Canada and the FDA released guidances pertaining to proprietary name development – Health Canada’s proprietary name guidance was finalized and FDA released its first-ever initial draft guidance on the topic of name selection and development. Industry is now curious to learn how these guidances will affect their current trademark development and selection process and their trademark’s chance of approval.

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  • FDA Issues New Q&A On Data Integrity

    2 September, 2014 Jamie Colgin, Colgin Consulting, Inc.

    Recently FDA published a new set of seven questions and answers. Three questions cover data integrity and e-signatures. While the Q&A target GMP, there are lessons to be learned for all of us:

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  • The 3 Biggest Project Management Problems in the Regulated Environment

    2 October, 2014 Paul Sanderson Lead, Solutions Consultants Group, MasterControl Inc.

    Effective project management helps your company save time and money by keeping projects on time and on budget. It optimizes your resources by assigning the right people with the right skills for every project. In a regulated environment, you need all of these, plus one more crucial consideration: compliance.

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  • What You Don't Know About the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) Implementation Plan

    28 August, 2014 Peter Knauer, Senior QCC Consultant, MasterControl Inc. and Moj Eram, Regulatory Consultant

    This article discusses the implementation aspects of the new Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which was signed into law (Title II of Public Law 113-54) by President Obama on November, 27, 2013. The Act intends to build a comprehensive, standard electronic and interoperable system to identify and trace prescription drugs in the US.

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  • Regulatory Records Primer Part 2: Decoding the Requirements for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers

    26 August, 2014 Les Schnoll, Quality Docs, LLC

    In Part 1 of the Regulatory Records Primer (Decoding the Requirements for Medical Device Manufacturers), I discussed the general requirements and thought processes undertaken by the FDA with respect to regulatory records.  While the drug side has not yet “evolved” to using a quality systems approach to the regulatory requirements, the same basic process holds true.  Following is a discussion on the regulatory records required to be maintained by manufacturers of finished drug products.

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  • Questions All Auditors Should Ask: The Use and Misuse of Audit Checklists

    31 July, 2014 by Laurie Meehan, Polaris Compliance Consultants, Inc.

    There’s nothing wrong with using a good checklist, as long as you remember that there will always be something wrong with your checklist. It is simply not possible to develop a checklist that will get to the core of every problem, that will cover every scenario, or that will ever be any reasonable substitute for that all important question: “Why?” So how can you develop the best checklists possible and avoid relying on them too heavily?

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  • Are You Ensuring Supplier Quality?

    8 July, 2014 Christine Park, Quality Architech, Christine Park & Associates

    "Everyone cares about quality. Just ask them. However, unless someone actively measures quality performance, you must question the commitment to improvement."

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  • Partnering with Quality Professionals Worldwide

    19 June, 2014 by Jon Beckstrand, CEO, MasterControl Inc.

    MasterControl has grown our reach significantly over the last 10 years—from a small provider of a narrowly focused document control product to one of the largest organizations in the world focused on helping quality and compliance professionals achieve their purpose. I have met with many of the world’s top quality professionals over the past 10 years and I have been amazed by their devotion and commitment. I have recently found myself asking the question: What drives these dedicated people? Why are they so passionate about their jobs? I believe I have found the answer and it has had a strong effect on how I view MasterControl’s mission.

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  • Quality’s Role in Drug Approvals

    12 June, 2014 by Theresa Allio, Ph.D.

    In a recent review, I summarized the underlying reasons contributing to delayed market entry for 51 product applications submitted to CDER between 2009 and 2012.1 Reasons cited in the complete response letters issued for these applications covered a number of areas, including safety, efficacy, regulatory, labeling and quality related issues. Quality- related issues were one of the most prominent reasons for delay of market entry with deficiencies being cited in 20/51 (39%) of applications. GMP inspection failures and data deficiencies contributed equally to the quality citations. The prominence of quality-related issues in the delay of product approvals emphasizes the importance of robust quality programs in drug development. Understanding what elements have posed as hurdles in past development programs will help a sponsor avoid these pitfalls in the future.

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  • 7 Steps to CAPA Success

    10 June, 2014 by David R. Butcher, Marketing Communications, MasterControl

    A formal Corrective Action/Preventive Action (CAPA) can be a powerful tool for meeting current regulatory requirements. Done right, the systematic investigation of the root causes of identified problems or identified risks will prevent their occurrence or recurrence. For many companies, however, a crucial obstacle to CAPA success persists: adequate documentation of actions taken to achieve quality success.

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