The FDA’s ICH Q9 quality risk management (QRM) guidance material is the foundation for understanding and evaluating patient risks associated with developing and manufacturing pharmaceuticals. This three-part paper describes approaches a team of subject matter experts (SMEs) can use for implementing two important applications of QRM. Part I provides a method for identifying and remediating threat risks that may affect the product’s quality or other important aspects of a manufacturing enterprise’s lifecycle, from product research and development to commercial manufacturing. The second QRM application covered in Part II manages patient risks by identifying, evaluating, and managing risks associated with process parameters (PP) on the product’s critical quality attributes (CQAs). The final paper, Part III, describes an approach for accepting or further mitigating the risks evaluated by the QRM exercise…
Tag: <span>quality risk management</span>
While many risk analysis methods describe how execution or performance risks originate and propagate through pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes and systems, few provide methods for efficiently estimating the uncertainty of an execution risk’s occurrence. This article describes prospective causal risk modeling (PCRM) for estimating the risk’s uncertainty of failures associated with executing processes, particularly when little process performance information or data is available. Building upon a basic unit of risk, the process-based system risk structure (SRS) approach is combined with PCRM to provide a method of carrying out quality risk management (QRM) exercises that properly assess both the severity and uncertainty of process execution risks. After the risks are structured using an SRS, PCRM provides a straightforward and effective method for using subjective human judgement and thought experiments to evaluate the risk process’s causal mechanisms for analyzing, evaluating, and controlling the uncertainty, including its likelihood of occurrence, of significant risks associated with developing and manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Using an SRS/PCRM-based QRM exercise, a wide variety of process execution risks can be efficiently evaluated and accepted or rejected so that important risks requiring mitigation can be identified for additional evaluation, control, and eventual acceptance.