FDA’s Rick Friedman and Rebecca Rodriguez Confirmed as Closing Plenary Speakers for PDA Human Factors Workshop 22 February, 2013

Bethesda, Md., February 1, 2012 – The Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) announced today that Richard Friedman,Associate Director OMPQ, U.S. FDA, and Rebecca Rodriguez, Consumer Safety Officer, U.S. FDA, have been confirmed to deliver the closing plenary talks at the 2013 Human Factors and Human Error Reduction Workshop. The workshop will take place on April 17 – 18, 2013 at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fla.

“PDA continues Connecting People, Science and Regulation® by offering high-quality, technical workshops with the cooperation of officials from the FDA and other regulatory bodies worldwide,” said Richard Johnson, PDA President and CEO. “In 2013, we are hosting seven conferences and workshops with the FDA on topics critical to pharmaceutical manufacturers, like glass packaging, supply chain and internal investigations. The 22nd annual PDA/FDA Joint Regulatory Conference stands out as the longest running, co-hosted meeting with FDA on GMP and other QA/QC and manufacturing topics. In addition, FDA officials like Mr. Friedman and Ms. Rodriguez continue to participate in our other meetings, like the Human Factors Workshop and the Annual Meeting.”

The workshop will introduce the audience to the science of human factors and will illustrate the significant role and impact human factors has made in other industries ranging from aviation to nuclear control rooms. Following this brief introduction, the audience will participate in interactive sessions to learn how to use various human factors tools to help assess, understand and utilize the information needed to address manufacturing performance and/or safety concerns in processing and manufacturing facilities.

Friedman and Rodriguez serve as the closing bookend to an event that begins with Keynote Speaker Dr. Najmedin Meshkati, Prof. of Civil/Environmental Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California. In between, sessions featuring case studies will be shared by the moderators to highlight potential areas of concern, and how these areas have been improved through the use of human factors tools and techniques, resulting in improvements of operations, layout, workflow and overall system design. Speakers from Amgen, Radius Product Development and Abbott Medical Optics are already confirmed.

More information on the workshop is available at http://www.pda.org/humanfactors2013.