Technically Speaking: Quality Documentation is One of the Best Ways to Boost Performance
Why well-organized documentation is critical at every stage of the process.
In the pharmaceutical industry, high-quality technical documentation is essential for optimizing performance. It forms the foundation for ensuring regulatory compliance, maintaining product quality, and safeguarding patient safety.
From drug development to regulatory approval, to production to delivery, precise and well-organized documentation is vital at every stage. Poor technical documentation can lead to regulatory delays, non-compliance, product recalls, manufacturing inefficiency, and safety risks. These consequences underscore the critical need for meticulous record-keeping.
The accuracy of documentation often begins with a management execution system that is designed to maintain information on matters such as inventory, recalls, quality assurance, and federal guidelines and regulations. By assessing the overall presence and performance of their current documentation methodology, companies can better prepare themselves for effective business operations.
Pharmaceutical companies that ensure systems are in place that adhere to regulatory guidelines, use structured frameworks, guarantee data integrity, and invest in training can create documentation that meets the highest standards and protects their products, patients, and profits.
Maintaining quality documentation
Despite the recognized importance of quality documentation, it continues to be an issue in the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, the FDA recently sent numerous warning letters for failures in data documentation.1 This batch of letters was specifically focused on procedures not being written or fully followed, inadequate training of staff, and insufficient quality control.
Certain manufacturers were cited for releasing drug batches without ensuring validation or conducting thorough record reviews. These errors risked the quality and safety of medications being distributed to patients.
One example involved mislabeled products that were marketed as COVID-19 preventatives. The firms marketing the products failed to keep accurate safety data or documentation and, thus, misleadingly represented the products’ efficacy and safety. As this incident demonstrates, documentation deficiencies can quickly escalate into regulatory actions and ultimately impact a company’s reputation.
In the FDA’s warnings, improving written procedural documentation and implementing more robust data validation processes were noted as critical steps needed to prevent similar issues in the future. Another key to maintaining proper documentation is for companies to be aware of and address the challenges that frequently arise during the documentation process.
Addressing technical documentation challenges
It’s vital for companies to recognize and overcome several challenges involved in producing quality documentation in today’s marketplace. These include staying up to date with regulatory changes and ensuring all documentation meets current requirements across different jurisdictions. Other challenges involve safeguarding data integrity, effectively balancing the need for thorough documentation with strict project deadlines, efficiently navigating multiple review levels and regulatory checks, and managing a variety of formats to ensure that all documents adhere to the same accuracy and safety standards.
Numerous pharmaceutical companies are shifting from paper-based documentation to electronic systems, such as manufacturing execution systems and electronic batch records. These digital systems claim to streamline the documentation process by capturing data in real-time, reducing human error, and enabling secure data storage for compliance with standards, such as the FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11, a set of regulations that establish guidelines for electronic records and signatures.2
This digital transformation can be fraught with challenges, such as staff training, integration with legacy systems, and ensuring regulatory compliance for electronic records. Several warning signs may emerge if all the different documentation challenges are not being met appropriately.
These red flags include inconsistent or missing documentation, increased deviations or non-conformance reports, non-adherence to regulatory standards, delays in document review and approval, inaccurate or obsolete data, poor document traceability, and increased product recalls or quality issues. The good news is there are ways pharmaceutical companies can better manage documentation and prevent these warning signs from occurring.
Technical documentation best practices
To ensure quality documentation, it is critical for pharmaceutical companies to take four essential actions:
1. Address regulatory guidelines. Agencies such as the FDA and the European Medicines Agency have set stringent requirements for documentation. It is imperative for companies to stay current on these requirements. Knowing the requirements leads to the production of high-quality documentation, which provides the evidence required to prove compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices, Good Laboratory Practices, and Good Clinical Practices.
2. Use structured frameworks. One of the best ways to maintain high quality across various documents is to rely on standardized templates and frameworks to ensure consistency. These structured frameworks promote uniformity in how processes, protocols, results, and reports are compiled and written, making them easier to review and audit.
3. Focus on data integrity. Advanced artificial intelligence technology provides companies with faster access to more data than ever and increases the number of ways employees collaborate over data. These innovations also provide additional opportunities for data to become corrupted or weakened. It is vital for companies to take steps to protect the integrity of their data. Implementing data governance frameworks and quality control measures, such as audit trails and regular data reviews, are crucial for maintaining data quality.
4. Invest in training. Another key to maintaining data quality is to provide regular training to staff involved in the documentation process. Education on regulatory requirements, internal documentation processes, industry best practices, electronic document management systems, and more will positively impact documentation workflow and quality.
Additional best practices include implementing a process for regular reviews and audits of technical documentation to ensure it is always up-to-date and committing to keeping documentation “jargon-free.” Using simple and straightforward language helps make documentation accessible to auditors, regulators, and even future employees who may not be familiar with a specific project or process.
To maintain the highest level of document integrity, companies can consider using 100% paper documentation and then rely on an electronic system as a backup.
“If it is not written down, it didn’t happen”
In the pharmaceutical industry, high-quality technical documentation is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity. Documentation provides a clear picture of what a company has done in the past and what it is doing now so that company officials can accurately plan for the future and make the best possible decisions for the organization and its customers.
If the active technical documentation does not accurately reflect the work being conducted on the floor, companies will find themselves liable for damages in the event of a harmful incident. This danger makes maintaining document quality and data integrity crucial for long-term success.
By focusing on creating comprehensive, high-quality documentation, organizations can ensure compliance with strict regulatory standards, guarantee product safety and efficacy, support effective knowledge transfer and traceability, and better protect the future growth and success of the company. The bottom line is that in today’s marketplace, quality documentation has become the foundation upon which a pharmaceutical company can avoid costly errors, improve performance, and unlock steady growth.
About the Author
Ankitkumar C. Patel is a senior quality assurance/quality control specialist for a pharmaceutical packaging company. His expertise includes technical documentation, performance reporting, batch oversight, and quality- and process-improvement initiatives. Patel holds Bachelor of Pharmacy and Master of Pharmaceutical Chemistry degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
References
1. FDA Warning Letters on Data Integrity Issues, Online GMP Training, January 6, 2022, https://www.onlinegmptraining.com/fda-warning-letters-on-data-integrity-issues/
2. 21 CFR Part 11 Requirements [Explained], by Allan Murphy Bruun, May 29, 2023,
https://simplerqms.com/21-cfr-part-11-requirements/
