Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Bureau July 28, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), is announcing the availability of a draft guidance for industry entitled ``Request for Quality Metrics'' and a public meeting regarding the Agency's plans associated with a quality metrics reporting program. The draft guidance and public meeting are intended to gain stakeholders' perspectives on various aspects of the development and planned implementation of a quality metrics program launched under the authority of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the FD&C Act). The guidance includes an explanation of how FDA intends to use quality metrics data to further develop the FDA's risk-based inspection scheduling, to identify situations in which there may be a risk for drug supply disruption, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of establishment inspections, and to improve FDA's evaluation of drug manufacturing and control operations. FDA expects that the initial use of the metrics will be to consider a decreased surveillance inspection frequency for certain establishments. For example, establishments that have highly controlled manufacturing processes have the potential to be inspected less often (as a lower priority for inspection) than similar establishments that demonstrate uncontrolled processes (as a higher priority for inspection). In addition, FDA intends to consider whether these metrics may provide a basis for FDA to use improved risk-based principles to determine the appropriate reporting category for postapproval manufacturing changes. FDA intends to consider the input from this public meeting as we finalize this guidance and the planned implementation of this program, including FDA's initial set of requests for quality metrics data.