Failure mode and effects analysis drastically reduced potential risks in clinical trial conduct

• Main Authors: Lee H, Baik J, Kim HJ, Kim R
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dove Medical Press 2017-10-01
• Series: Drug Design, Development and Therapy
• Subjects: clinical trial; failure modes and effects analysis; quality improvement; quality management
• Online Access: https://www.dovepress.com/failure-mode-and-effects-analysis-drastically-reduced-potential-risks--peer-reviewed-article-DDDT

Howard Lee,1,2,* Heechan Lee,1,2,* Jungmi Baik,3 Hyunjung Kim,3 Rachel Kim4 1Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Seoul National University College of Medicine and Hospital, 2Department of Transdisciplinary Studies, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, 3Clinical Trials Center, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 4Global Clinical Trial Execution, Pfizer Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a risk management tool to proactively identify and assess the causes and effects of potential failures in a system, thereby preventing them from happening. The objective of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of FMEA applied to an academic clinical trial center in a tertiary care setting.Methods: A multidisciplinary FMEA focus group at the Seoul National University Hospital Clinical Trials Center selected 6 core clinical trial processes, for which potential failure modes were identified and their risk priority number (RPN) was assessed. Remedial action plans for high-risk failure modes (RPN >160) were devised and a follow-up RPN scoring was conducted a year later.Results: A total of 114 failure modes were identified with an RPN score ranging 3–378, which was mainly driven by the severity score. Fourteen failure modes were of high risk, 11 of which were addressed by remedial actions. Rescoring showed a dramatic improvement attributed to reduction in the occurrence and detection scores by >3 and >2 points, respectively.Conclusions: FMEA is a powerful tool to improve quality in clinical trials. The Seoul National University Hospital Clinical Trials Center is expanding its FMEA capability to other core clinical trial processes. Keywords: clinical trial, failure modes and effects analysis, quality improvement, quality management, quality risks