Quality audit case study

Bohaychuk W, and Ball G (1998), GCP Audit Findings - Case Study 1, Quality Assurance Journal, Volume 3, Issue 2. 

Quality audit case study Poynton, Cheshire... 

It might be added here, that these responsibilities will certainly be transferred to their full extent to an eventual replacement Study Director. Since a permanent replacement will entail the privilege - or the burden, whichever describes the situation better - of accepting, with the signature under the statement of GLP compliance of the final report, the full responsibility for the quality, integrity and reliability of the data and the report, it will be one of the first activities of this person to assure him- or herself, as soon as practicable after taking over the new position, and preferably with the assistance of Quality Assurance personnel, of the GLP compliance in the study as it has been conducted to date. If this were to be done by means of an interim review or data audit, the results of such a GLP review should be fully documented, especially in such cases where deficiencies or deviations were found. 

As a final point to this section on inspections, it should be kept in mind that - as it is the case for any other operative procedures covered by the GLP Principles - the Quality Assurance Programme of inspections (and audits) should be subject to management verification. Management has to assure that the Quality Assurance responsibility is being performed in accordance with these Principles of Good Laboratory Practice which means that the Quality Assurance has to provide management with periodic reports on its activities, not only for single studies as already detailed above, but for the totality of its... 

One such case may be the question of report amendments. If a report should have to be amended, because either further data from other studies may have invalidated some of the conclusions drawn in the original report, or because an error has been detected which had escaped earlier on the attention of the Study Director and the Quality Assurance, then this amendment to the report will again have to be audited by the Quality Assurance, which will furthermore have to prepare an amendment to the former Quality Assurance statement. 

The underlying principle of GLP requires that the retention of records, other documentation, samples and specimens should provide, wherever possible, the means for full study reconstruction. Thus, it follows logically that also samples from each batch of test and reference item should be collected and retained. In this way it can be ensured that any questions regarding the quality, purity, stability and identity of the test item, that might turn up during the Quality Assurance audit or the scientific assessment of the study, could be resolved by an independent analysis of the reserve sample, without necessitating the repetition of the study itself in case of major doubts about the test item. The requirement that a sample for analytical purposes from each batch of test item should be retained would therefore not seem to pose major problems of interpretation and implementation. 

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