Adam Fleming's Blog (255)

Compared to bigger actions, Recalls, 483s, Warning Letters and consent decrees are only some of the milder parts of punishments that the FDA could impose on a medical device company that fails to meet regulatory requirements. The bigger actions can include seizure, injunction, and civil money penalties. The Park Doctrine allows executives to even be sentenced to prison.

In the…

Food establishments continue to be a major source for pests due to the changes brought about in the means and ways by which food is produced and handled and in the ways of preparation techniques and eating habits. The pests in turn are sources for illness-causing microorganisms. The more knowledge about pest control at their disposal; the better it is for food processing and foodservice personnel, because this is essential for ensuring a safe food supply for consumers.…

For those in the field of exploration, there is a need to zero in on an effective and affordable methodology that identifies prospective targets which are related to, or controlled by tectonic structures. This methodology should help explorers concentrate their exploration efforts over new areas keeping their budget in control, armed even with limited or nonexistent geological information.…

That the FDA has become more rigorous in the enforcement of Part 11 through its new Part 11 and on-going data integrity inspection and enforcement program is evident in this: In just the last three years, it issued more than 30 Warning Letters with Part 11 and data integrity violations. The most common citations are related to not only inadequate integrity, security and availability of electronic records, but also to validation of software and computer systems.…

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has strengthened the FDA’s enforcement authority. The FDA now has the authority to not only mandate product recalls; the records and information they may request to see have increased as well. What has also gone up is the FDA’s documentation review authority.

Allergen mislabeling microbiological and foreign material contamination are the…

A medical device recall means the correction or removal of a device for human use where FDA finds that there is a reasonable probability that the device would cause serious, adverse health consequences or death. It is an action taken to address a problem with a medical device that violates FDA law. Recalls are made when a) a medical device is defective; b) when it could be a risk to health, or c) when it is both defective and a risk to health.…

Our world today is unthinkable without data. We seem to be flooded by it. Day in and day out, the world processes trillions of bytes. Big Data seems to be everywhere and has compounded our already heavy reliance on data.

But has this proliferation of data made any significant difference to our lives? Has it made our business decision-making any more effective or insightful?…

Among the most important aspects that need to be taken into consideration in any application is the sample size. The sample size, when taken accurately, can be a very reliable guide to the whole. When the wrong sample size is taken for magnification, it could lead to wrong results, throwing the whole exercise into disarray. Determining the right sample size is thus of utmost importance to any application. There are scientific and verifiable means of doing this.…

A measure of the criticality of CAPA to medical device manufacture can be ascertained from the fact that the FDA considers the strength of a manufacturer’s CAPA program as the criterion for deciding how strong or weak he is. Given this fact, it pays to have a watertight CAPA system in place.

Risk-based CAPA is the latest stage in the evolution of the CAPA model. These days, the medical devices industry is using various risk-based approaches and tools to set-up,…

Utmost care has to go into a financial institution’s Cash Management and credit RFP process, which is quite a painful process. One needs to think about the whole process and get a thorough understanding of it before entering this exercise.  This understanding will go a long way in helping to ease the pain of the process, but is in itself quite an exercise.

A clear understanding…

Omission is a very important, but often overlooked aspect of Quality. It is often not realized in most organizations that the risk not doing a thing right, or what may be termed risk of omission, usually outweighs and is far more dangerous than the risk of what they do wrong, or what is a result of poor quality. The best way to understand the importance of this paradigm is that poor quality generally comes out or makes itself known during inspections and tests, or when…

Going beyond just asking the laboratory for geochemical extracting information of a gold test by sampling every meter of the drill core of a trench and using multielement analysis is an approach strongly recommended by most mining specialists. There exist other methods of geochemical data analysis techniques and obtaining geochemical extracting information, but these are largely ignored by the industry.

Making sense of the geochemical extracting…

A few important postmarketing vigilance revisions are now being implemented. One of these is the revised medical device guidance document on postmarketing vigilance (MEDDEV 2.12-1 rev 5), which came into force on January 1, 2008.

Offering greater clarity and more guidance than the previous version, the new document includes new reporting terminology and many new concepts. It has also excised or added new, important terms.…