After acquiring Qualsys in a £15.6m deal in August 2020, Ideagen has launched the latest version of its Q-Pulse quality management software product.     Ideagen is a leading provider of quality, audit, risk and compliance management software. Last month Ideagen acquired Qualsys, absorbing the cloud-native Version 7 of Qualsys' EQMS software into its portfolio.   This is a fantastic acquisition for Ideagen and will have a significant impact on our position in the EQMS market. The latest iteration of [Qualsys'] product will sit perfectly within our Q-Pulse product family and wil ..read more

From time-to-time, every business takes a look at their software and aims to trim the fat of any software tools which need to be retired, replaced or consolidated.  It's not unusual for large companies to find there are two or more tools which overlap slightly with some of the  functionality in EQMS. Afterall, EQMS is a feature-rich tool used across the enterprise. And an increasing number of single use SaaS products are saying that they offer a "GRC" solution that is usually a basic ticketing system.  But for many of our customers, when this happens, after spending months selec ..read more

Approximately 56% of quality professionals said they manage quality using Word and Excel documents using shared folders in the 2020 Global Quality Survey.  While shared folders such as SharePoint, Dropbox and OneDrive for your Excel and Word documents might seem like a low-cost, quick and easy solution, over time, these systems cause more damage and cost a lot more than you may initially think.  In this article, we've shared seven ways managing quality processes using excel and word files puts your business at risk.     1) Shared folders do not embed your processes Shared ..read more

There are ample quality and compliance tools for medical device companies now, including the latest cloud-based QMS software to folders filled with policy documents, training records and audit templates.  Quality management software has numerous important advantages over manual systems. Well-designed quality management software will:  Reduce the risk of data integrity and product quality issues  Facilitate rapid innovation with confidence all the right information has been documented (No retrospective validation!)   Link together information and data  Embed qua ..read more

Despite leaving the European Union in early 2020, the UK remains bound by EU rules until the end of the year. In 2021 UK agencies, including the MHRA, will be cut loose to chart an independent course - and the MHRA has given a hint of what its new direction will look like in its 2020-21 business plan. In fact, 3 'fundamental shifts' to the MHRA's strategy have been laid out, which will impact the thousands of British life science organisations which are regulated by the agency. Let's take a look.       1. Speed to market   Simply put, the MHRA wants UK drug manufacturers t ..read more

As quality professionals, we are usually the main point of contact for customer and regulatory audits.  This can take up a huge amount of time.  In fact, the Global Quality Survey 2020 found quality professionals are spending around an eighth of their working hours being audited.  So, how can we make this experience easier, faster, more productive, and even valuable?  We asked Kate Armitage, Compliance Director at Qualsys to share her top tips for being audited.  #1 Use your ISO certification to save you time  Sometimes the people who are auditing do not und ..read more

Your business lives and dies on the relationships you build with your customers. Transparency, rapid complaint resolution and proving you care are all vital ingredients for customer satisfaction. Satisfying customer demands is the core of modern quality management - which is why the new iteration of our quality management software, EQMS 7, contains a bundle of new features to let you build a comprehensive customer relationship portal. Here's how.     Scenario   You've implemented EQMS. With the help of your implementation manager, you've configured an end-to-end process in your ..read more

Chantal Stekelenburg is Head of Operations for Netherlands-based ethical hacking organisation Zerocopter. Zerocopter's approach is simple: they hack their customers, from eBay to Air France-KLM, then collect 'bug bounties' for any information security vulnerability they can uncover and report to them. Chantal spoke to Qualsys to share the wisdom she's picked up from her 4 years of ethical hacking, including: The main mistakes businesses make with their information security What the future of information security looks like in a world of 'white hat' and 'black hat' hackers 3 top tips &n ..read more

The Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) oversees the quality and compliance of all medicines and medical devices produced in the UK. That's great for patient safety. But it means a lot of work for life science organisations looking to hit and maintain the MHRA's impeccable standards.  The quality team at Huddersfield Pharmacy Specials faced typical NHS difficulties of stretched time, excessive admin and disconnected manual processes. In 2019 they adopted EQMS by Qualsys to achieve 3 goals:   1) Simplify MHRA compliance  2) Unlock new business opportuniti ..read more

Now, more than ever, it's important to capture regular and accurate health and safety data from your workforce.  Whether your focus is COVID-19 symptom detection or incident response, wellbeing management or near-miss risk mitigation, your workforce must be the eyes and ears of your health and safety team. How?  Your health and safety team need to support the wider organisation by providing systems and processes for quick, simple data reporting by all employees, wherever they are. But many health and safety teams struggle to get the visibility they need - using emails, paper forms, s ..read more