With manufacturers digitizing at a rapid rate, understanding the core of the European Union’s (EU) guidelines, Annex 11, and its approximate FDA counterpart, 21 CFR Part 11, is more critical than ever. They are central to understanding the conditions for life sciences manufacturers’ electronic data in the EU and the U.S., and while the guidance is similar in both countries, it’s important to understand the key differences.
Inadequate quality management and poor data can be costly for a life sciences company or similarly regulated industry. However, a strong corrective action/preventive action (CAPA) program paired with a digital CAPA management tool can help differentiate your company from the competition.
December 2, 2021
By Lisa Helmonds, VP, Quality & Operations, AVS Life Sciences, and Paul Andrea, Independent Consultant, MWA Consulting, Inc.
Whether your start up company makes pharmaceutical products, biologics, or medical devices, you all have one thing in common. You need to implement a robust digital quality management system (QMS) at the early phase of product development to comply with the ever changing and more stringent regulations throughout the product life cycle.
November 18, 2021
By Brian Curran, Senior VP of Strategic Growth, MasterControl
To support advanced data technologies and to compete in a modern market, manufacturers must close the digital gap on the shop floor, where critical production processes remain paper-based and disconnected. Digitizing the paper-based production record process can close this gap by creating productive connections between people, processes, and systems throughout the manufacturing process and across the entire enterprise for a holistic view of production data.
November 17, 2021
By James Jardine, GxP Lifeline Editor, MasterControl
Validation has historically been a time-consuming, painful undertaking for medtech companies that depend on commercial off-the-shelf software solutions. As that the bulk of that burden shifts away from users and onto software providers, it’s getting easier to take a risk-based approach to validation.
November 16, 2021
By David Butcher, Staff Writer, MasterControl
With proper preparation and the right tools, a manufacturing organization can always be ready to pass a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection relatively stress-free. Process mapping and gap analysis can help manufacturers not only show the FDA that a company is compliant with regulatory expectations, but also help demonstrate that standard operating procedures (SOPs) are correct and that employees understand them.
November 11, 2021
By James Irons, Director of Strategic Development, and Samir Patel, Project Lead - Digital Systems, Sequence
The pharmaceutical manufacturing industry resists digitization and continues to rely on paper as a single source of truth for record keeping. This outdated process is inefficient and can actually create more risk in the long run. Understand the primary causes of resistance to digitization and how to address those barriers.
November 9, 2021
By James Jardine, GxP Lifeline Editor, MasterControl
Don’t settle for ambiguous quality goals when you need measurable objectives that truly affect outcomes. Learn how alignment with ISO standards can turn your wishes into real quality improvements.
November 4, 2021
By David Jensen, Staff Writer, MasterControl
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set up the Quality System Regulation (QSR) to give medical device companies guidelines for ensuring quality, safety, and efficacy of their devices. There are many components to the QSR, but this post focuses on the requirements that apply to records.
November 2, 2021
By David Butcher, Staff Writer, MasterControl
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption to the global supply chain and the urgency around manufacturers quickly delivering life-saving products, it makes sense that manufacturing organizations and their supply partners might reassess their relationships and obligations to one another to manage the results of disruption to supply chain partners.
October 28, 2021
By David Butcher, Staff Writer, MasterControl
Supplier performance greatly affects the cost, quality, delivery, and responsiveness of a manufacturer’s business. For any manufacturer whose product quality relies in part on a supplier’s own product or service, the organization must be able to ensure or improve high supplier performance. Supplier scorecards are a logical place to start.
October 12, 2021
By James Jardine, GxP Lifeline Editor, MasterControl
Form 483 inspectional observation reports from the FDA result in painful and costly nightmares for pharmaceutical companies. Learn the top five reasons the agency issues Form 483s and find out best practices for steering clear of them.
September 30, 2021
By James Jardine, GxP Lifeline Editor, MasterControl
Innovative streamlining technologies like the cloud are transforming the way clinical trials are conducted and monitored. If you want to stay in the FDA’s good graces, there are five key elements you need to understand when using digital tools in your clinical activities.
September 28, 2021
By David Jensen, Staff Writer, MasterControl
Current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) are minimum requirements that companies must meet in developing health care-related products. Data integrity plays a key role in all areas of GMP compliance. This post provides tips on developing a data management strategy to ensure ongoing compliance with data integrity guidelines.
September 27, 2021
By David Jensen, Staff Writer, MasterControl
The FDA continues to endeavor to reduce the regulatory burden on medical device manufacturers. Still, devices need to make the trek through the regulatory pathway to achieve market approval. This post details how medtech companies can achieve successful product compliance and a faster market launch.
September 21, 2021
By John Chiechi, Manager, Enterey
In the life sciences digitization is a powerful way to improve efficiency, but the successful adoption of new digital tools requires effective change management.
September 20, 2021
By Sarah Beale, Staff Writer, MasterControl
A look at the data collected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) makes it clear that in life sciences, standard operating procedures (SOPs) tend to be a compliance problem. Digital tools and good practices for writing and enforcing SOPs are key to making them effective and compliant.
September 17, 2021
By Seyed Khorashahi, executive vice president of medical devices and CTO at Regulatory Compliance Associates (RCA) Inc.
The vast interconnectivity of medical devices is widening the attack surface of the public health sector.
Intrusions and breaches are possible because of weaknesses in a medical device’s cybersecurity design. This post discusses the security vulnerabilities in medical devices and provides tips and resources for companies to strengthen their cybersecurity posture.
September 16, 2021
By Nicolle Cannon, Founder & CEO, Cannon Quality Group
Medical device companies can take a risk-based approach, which simplifies regulatory compliance while alleviating concerns about speed-to-market and new device clearance overhead costs to maintain compliance.
