I have finalised the demo for the ICH-GCP E6 R3 refresher course. Overall, I liked the content and the interface. I also want to thank Whitehall Train...
About
The Qualified Person (QP) plays a critical role in ensuring that every batch of medicinal product released to the market has been manufactured, tested, and controlled in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), the Marketing Authorisation, and applicable regulatory requirements. Effective batch certification requires the evaluation of manufacturing records, quality system evidence, deviations, investigations, and supply chain controls to support informed and legally compliant release decisions.
This Qualified Person Responsibilities, Batch Certification and Batch Release Training Course & Certification provides comprehensive knowledge of QP legal responsibilities, EU GMP requirements, batch certification principles, evidence-based decision-making, Pharmaceutical Quality System oversight, manufacturing and testing review, importation and third-country manufacturing, deviations, changes, out-of-specification investigations, exceptional certification scenarios, digital batch release systems, inspection readiness, and regulatory expectations. Upon successful completion, learners receive a certification demonstrating their understanding of Qualified Person responsibilities and compliant batch certification best practices.
- Qualified Persons (QPs) and QP Trainees
- Quality Assurance and Quality Management Professionals
- Qualified Person Delegates and Batch Release Personnel
- Manufacturing, Production, and Operations Managers
- Regulatory Affairs and GMP Compliance Professionals
- Quality Control and Laboratory Professionals
- Auditors and Pharmaceutical Quality System Professionals
- Anyone involved in batch certification, batch release, or GMP compliance for medicinal products
What you will learn
Understand the legal responsibilities of the Qualified Person (QP), the principles of batch certification and batch release, and the regulatory framework governing medicinal product release.
Learn how to evaluate manufacturing, testing, deviations, changes, investigations, supplier oversight, and quality system evidence to support compliant batch certification decisions.
Develop knowledge of EU, EEA, UK, and third-country manufacturing requirements, importation controls, exceptional certification scenarios, and risk-based decision-making.
Gain practical understanding of Pharmaceutical Quality System oversight, inspection readiness, digital batch release systems, documentation, and best practices for defensible QP certification.
Course Syllabus
- Why the QP role exists
- Law and guidance are not the same
- The EU/EEA legal framework [EU/EEA]
- Annex 16 — status and reach [EU/EEA; adopted UK]
- The UK legal framework [UK]
- Great Britain and Northern Ireland can differ [GB vs NI]
- Post-Brexit importation recognition [UK/GB]
- UK-Only labelling and UK-resident QP [UK/GB]
- Manufacturing and import authorisation (MIA)
- Wholesale dealer's authorisation and the RPi [UK]
- The marketing authorisation binds certification
- The product specification file
- Certification, release and supply — the core distinction
- QP certification versus quality-unit release
- What Annex 16 asks the QP to confirm [EU/EEA; adopted UK]
- Who may act as a QP [EU vs UK]
- Organisational independence of the QP
- Reliance on systems and the single-QP-responsibility principle
- Rely on, but assure
- Relying on and challenging the PQS
- The certification register
- Continuous and ongoing certification
- The scope of professional judgement
- Judgement never overrides law or the MA
- Risk management underpins judgement [ICH Q9(R1)]
- Escalation — when and how
- Refusal to certify — the ultimate safeguard
- Handling and documenting a refusal
- Role of the marketing authorisation holder
- Role of the manufacturer
- Role of the importer [Annex 21 preview]
- Role of the quality unit
- How the roles interlock
- When to seek competent-authority interpretation
- Professional integrity and raising concerns
- Personal accountability of the QP
- Records that make certification defensible
- Common misconceptions about the QP role
- How authorisation, MA and certification interlock
- Senior management and the quality system [EU/EEA + UK]
- Deputy QPs and multiple named QPs
- QP knowledge and continuing competence
- The quality-control laboratory's role
- Sampling and testing responsibilities
- IMP release is a separate track [EU / GB / NI]
- Relying on MRAs and recognition [EU & UK, varies]
- Use current effective texts; drafts are not law [UK example]
- Contract givers and contract acceptors [preview]
- Quality and technical agreements [preview]
- Governance that protects the decision
- The evidence package as a whole
- Absence of a finding is not proof
- A certification checklist gives structure
- The batch evidence index
- The master batch record
- The executed batch record
- Reconciling the record against the standard
- Yield and material reconciliation
- In-process control results
- Finished-product specifications
- Starting-material and component specifications
- Analytical methods and their validation status
- Certificates of analysis — finished product
- Certificates of analysis — API and excipients
- Reading a certificate of analysis critically
- Pharmacopoeial versus registered specifications [type]
- Environmental monitoring data
- Process monitoring and critical parameters
- Utilities — water and gases
- Validation and qualification — the status question
- Process validation status
- Equipment and facility qualification
- Cleaning validation status
- Computerised system validation [preview]
- Ongoing verification keeps the state current
- Out-of-specification results
- Out-of-trend results
- The laboratory investigation phase
- The full investigation phase
- Deviations — planned and unplanned
- Assessing a deviation's impact on the batch
- Correction, corrective action and preventive action
- Open deviations and CAPA at certification
- Change control
- Changes against the marketing authorisation
- Post-approval changes and variations [EU vs UK]
- Unimplemented commitments
- Stability data and the batch
- Shelf-life, expiry and retest dating
- The ongoing stability programme
- Complaints and their relevance to the batch
- Prior batch history and trends
- Recalls and field-action history
- Data integrity — the ALCOA+ principles (rule 5)
- Electronic, paper and hybrid records
- Data-integrity red flags
- Supplier and material-source status
- Contract manufacturing site status
- Contract testing-laboratory status
- Quality and technical agreements in the evidence
- Traceability across the supply chain
- Reference and retention samples [Annex 19]
- Product quality review — purpose
- PQR trends and the QP
- Using trends to inform certification
- Assembling the complete package
- Cross-checking for consistency and conflict
- Recognising incomplete evidence
- Recognising conflicting evidence
- When to pause certification
- The certification decision, synthesised
- The NorthStar Cardizen dossier (fictional)
- Walking the Cardizen dossier (fictional)
- The three acts: certification, release and supply
- QP certification defined
- Quality-unit release defined
- Placing on the market / supply defined
- Jurisdiction labels for release across EU/EEA and UK
- The single QP responsibility with reliance
- What a manufacturing chain is
- Multiple sites, multiple authorisations
- Partial manufacture sites
- Packaging sites: primary and secondary
- Bulk versus finished-product certification points
- The site of certification
- Named QPs and organisational responsibility
- Contract manufacture oversight
- Contract laboratories: outsourced testing
- Why technical and quality agreements exist
- Technical agreement versus quality agreement
- What a quality agreement must define
- QP-to-QP confirmation: what it is
- What a QP-to-QP confirmation covers — and does not
- The chain of confidence in practice
- Contract-laboratory quality agreement specifics
- Practical workshop: quality-agreement gap assessment
- Common quality-agreement gaps
- Sampling responsibilities across the chain
- Testing responsibilities: where testing is done
- Representative sampling as a certification foundation
- Relying on testing at another EU/EEA site
- MRA and recognition: scope varies (Rule 4b)
- What may be relied on versus what must be verified
- Non-MRA considerations and the bridge to importation
- Decision: rely on partner testing or re-test?
- From certification to release to supply
- UK release: MIA, UK-resident QP, GB versus NI
- EU/EEA release
- 'UK Only' labelling from 1 January 2025
- Documenting the release decision
- Reference and retention samples defined (Annex 19)
- Who keeps samples, and where
- Quantities, retention periods and storage
- Remote access to records and remote certification
- Electronic batch records and reliance
- Audit trails and data integrity for QP reliance
- Practical workshop: supply-chain mapping
- When to seek competent-authority interpretation
- Starting-material and supplier oversight
- Handover documentation between sites
- Deviations and changes crossing site boundaries
- Transport and storage between EU/EEA sites
- Ongoing and continuous certification
- The register of certification
- Scope of the QP's batch-record review
- Sampling of imported products: a signpost
- Multi-site certification: pulling it together
- What importation means
- Why importation is tightly controlled
- The importer as MIA holder (EU/EEA)
- The QP's role for imported products
- Two source anchors: Annex 21 and Annex 16
- Annex 21 overview: importer responsibilities
- The importation site and its authorisation
- Oversight of third-country manufacturing sites
- Ensuring GMP equivalent to EU standards
- Batch documentation transfer to the importer
- Reference and retention samples for imports
- Physical versus fiscal importation
- Sources of third-country GMP assurance
- GMP certificates and inspection information
- Evaluating third-country GMP evidence
- The audit as primary assurance
- Risk-based audit strategy and frequency
- What a third-country audit must cover
- Falsified-documentation risk
- Import testing: the default expectation
- What import testing covers
- Sampling representativeness for imports
- Exemption from import testing via MRA
- What may be relied on versus verified (imports)
- Recognition arrangements and approved countries
- Non-MRA imports: full testing and oversight
- Certifying imported batches under Annex 16
- Exercise: the MRA decision (decision tree)
- The UK importation regime after Brexit
- UK jurisdiction: Great Britain versus Northern Ireland
- UK route 1: RPi on a WDA(H) for EEA imports
- What the RPi checks
- 'UK Only' labelling from 1 January 2025
- UK route 2: UK MIA plus UK QP certification
- UK-resident QP on a UK MIA
- RPi route versus UK MIA route
- Choosing the UK route: a decision aid
- Transport and storage for imported products
- Supply-chain security and falsified medicines
- Managing shortages and continuity of supply
- When to seek competent-authority interpretation
- Practical: import-case workshop
- Practical: third-country audit-risk assessment
- Serialisation and safety-feature verification
- Change control at the third-country site
- Parallel-imported and repackaged products
- Importation: pulling it together
- Importing active substances versus finished products
- Certification versus confirmation for imports
- Risk-based reduction of import testing
- Stability and storage-condition assurance
- Provenance and chain of custody
- Data integrity across borders
- Deviations discovered on import
- Out-of-specification results on import testing
- Documentation language and translation control
- Northern Ireland importation specifics
- Additional controls for sterile and biological imports
- Imported IMPs follow a different framework
- Inspection readiness for imported batches
- Common importation errors to avoid
- Why quality events matter at certification
- Three ideas to keep separate: correction, CAPA, release
- Certification, release and supply in an event
- The rule that bounds every decision
- The event lifecycle
- Quality risk management as the backbone
- Criticality: critical, major, minor
- Event criticality matrix
- Examples of critical events
- Deviations: planned versus unplanned
- Deviation from the MA versus from the process
- When a deviation touches the MA
- Judging investigation adequacy
- Correction, CAPA and remediation
- Product impact assessment
- This batch, other batches, other markets
- What an out-of-specification result is
- OOS, OOT and OOE
- The OOS investigation in two phases
- Confirmed versus unconfirmed OOS
- When an OOS may be invalidated
- Retesting, resampling and averaging pitfalls
- A confirmed OOS cannot be tested into compliance
- An OOS disposition decision path
- Reprocessing versus rework
- MA and validation constraints on remediation
- Extra testing and stability after remediation
- Remediation decision path
- Prospective, concurrent and retrospective validation
- Concurrent validation release risks
- Retrospective validation and ongoing verification
- Change control and certification
- Changes pending regulatory approval — the hard stop
- You cannot certify to an unapproved change
- Variation types and jurisdiction
- Timing: implementation versus approval
- Transition steps and drafts are not law
- Stability commitments and certification
- A confirmed stability failure and the market
- Impact on other batches and markets
- Stability commitments as a QP assurance
- What 'exceptional certification' means
- Handling an unexpected deviation at certification
- Conditions that must all hold
- Conditional certification and confirmatory testing
- An exceptional certification decision tree
- Documenting the exceptional decision
- Escalation and the option to refuse
- Refusal is a valid, documented outcome
- Exceptional decisions and the wider system
- Science- and risk-based documentation
- What a good QP decision record contains
- Escalation to QA, management and authorities
- Defective medicines and reporting interface
- Traceability of the whole decision
- Common QP errors in event handling
- The event-to-disposition workflow
- Why special products need additional controls
- Medicinal product is not an IMP
- Same principles, additional evidence
- The special-product landscape
- What 'additional controls' means
- Scaling controls to risk
- What an investigational medicinal product is
- Medicinal product versus IMP frameworks
- The IMP evidence basis
- IMP GMP framework — the jurisdiction split
- EU/EEA IMP framework in detail
- Great Britain IMP framework in detail
- Northern Ireland IMP framework in detail
- IMP release versus commercial certification
- Blinding, coding and unblinding risk
- IMP importation and the jurisdiction of release
- Comparators in clinical trials
- Blinded and assembled trial packs
- Maintaining the blind through release
- Why biological products are different
- Biological release evidence
- Cold chain for biologicals
- Sterile products and the contamination-control strategy
- Sterility assurance evidence at release
- Terminal sterilisation versus aseptic processing
- Vaccines and batch release
- Independent official batch release
- Vaccine-specific release evidence
- Cold-chain excursions and the QP decision
- Advanced therapy medicinal products
- Chain of identity and starting materials
- Releasing under short shelf-life ATMP pressure
- The QP's ATMP challenges
- Real-time release testing
- How RTRT rests on the control strategy
- Parametric release
- RTRT versus end-product testing
- An RTRT / parametric readiness decision
- RTRT control-strategy evidence
- Short shelf-life release pressures
- Radiopharmaceuticals as a short-life example
- Emergency and unlicensed supply concepts
- Concurrent constraints and short-life products
- Parallel trade and repackaging concepts
- Repackaging is a manufacturing activity
- Import, 'UK Only' labelling and repackaging
- Oversight of repackaged product
- Choosing the right additional evidence
- Common errors with special products
- When to seek specialist and competent-authority input
- IMP labelling, expiry and re-labelling
- Biosimilars and comparability
- Blood, plasma and derived products
- Combination and device-integral products
- Cold-chain mapping and monitoring
- Nucleic-acid and mRNA product handling
- What the pharmaceutical quality system is
- The ICH Q10 model and its spirit
- Rely on - and challenge - the PQS
- What 'an effective PQS' actually means
- Discipline rule 5: an absent finding is not proof
- Discipline rule 3: judgement within the law and MA
- Quality culture defined
- Healthy versus weak quality culture
- The QP's influence on culture
- Management review as a system
- Inputs to management review
- Quality metrics that inform release oversight
- Reading a metric critically
- Escalation routes and the QP's voice
- When a QP must escalate
- QP independence and freedom to decide
- Leading and lagging indicators
- The Product Quality Review
- What a PQR examines
- PQR, trends and the certification decision
- PQR for imported products
- Quality risk management and ICH Q9
- The two primary principles of QRM
- Risk-based oversight of the PQS
- QRM tools at a glance
- Formality and subjectivity in ICH Q9(R1)
- Risk review and residual risk
- Outsourced activities and the PQS
- Contract giver and contract acceptor
- Quality and technical agreements
- Supplier qualification and oversight
- Ongoing monitoring of contractors
- The QP's reliance chain on outsourced testing
- Governing the outsourcing web
- Inspection findings feed the PQS
- Tracking commitments to closure
- The QP and unresolved commitments
- Training and competence of release teams
- QP succession and deputies
- Knowledge management across the lifecycle
- QP workload and capacity
- Conflicts of interest and independence
- Business continuity for release
- Planning for QP unavailability
- A PQS maturity model
- A PQS maturity assessment matrix
- Common misconceptions about PQS oversight
- Continual improvement and the PQS
- Bringing PQS oversight together
- Why a controlled workflow matters
- Certification, release and supply in the workflow
- The end-to-end certification workflow
- Workflow design principles
- Trigger and entry criteria
- The decision and certification step
- Handoffs and controlled transitions
- Roles in the certification workflow
- Segregation of duties
- The maker-checker principle
- The QP's non-delegable certification act
- Electronic batch records
- EBR benefits and risks
- Review by exception
- The EBR and the evidence package
- Structured data and right-first-time
- The system landscape: LIMS, MES, ERP
- What each system does
- Interfaces and data flow
- Interface risks and controls
- Data integrity across interfaces
- The purpose of audit trails
- What a good audit trail captures
- Audit trail review
- Risk-based audit-trail review
- Data-integrity principles: ALCOA and beyond
- Electronic signatures
- Electronic-signature controls
- Signature meaning and binding
- Electronic signatures: jurisdiction note
- The data-review workflow
- Exception and deviation handling in-system
- Managing overrides
- The QP's review of exceptions
- The certification register
- What the register records
- Traceability of decisions
- Retention and retrieval
- Business continuity for electronic systems
- Planned versus unplanned downtime
- Manual and hybrid fallback
- Recovery and reconciliation
- Cybersecurity for release systems
- Access control and privilege
- Backup, recovery and change control
- Common misconceptions about digital certification
- Bringing the workflow together
- What a GMP inspection actually tests
- Types of inspection and who inspects
- The inspection evidence room
- Building the batch-record dossier
- The QP's own records and delegations
- Roles and conduct during the inspection
- Data and audit-trail readiness
- Preparing for the QP interview
- The three acts, under questioning
- Jurisdiction discipline under questioning
- Judgement within the law and the MA
- Handling 'what if' and uncertainty questions
- Demonstrating batch traceability
- The audit trail behind each step
- Reliance versus verification, evidenced
- Reference and retention samples in the trace
- Common QP and release deficiencies
- Deficiency: incomplete evidence and the silence trap
- Deficiency: data-integrity and audit-trail gaps
- How deficiencies are classified
- Responding to findings: the CAPA cycle
- Writing a credible CAPA commitment
- Documenting the decision: the QP memorandum
- A pre-inspection readiness self-assessment
- Document control and version discipline
- The opening meeting and agreeing scope
- The single-QP-responsibility principle
- Traceability across multiple sites
- Continuous and ongoing certification
- Deficiency: jurisdiction confusion
- Deficiency: product versus IMP confusion
- Root-cause analysis behind a finding
- Verifying CAPA effectiveness
- Escalation and management review
- For-cause and follow-up inspections
- 📘 Bonus: Qualified Person Responsibilities, Batch Certification and Batch Release eBook (Free with purchase)
Course Benefits

Get our exclusive eBook with every purchase - a complete companion guide to the course, yours to keep forever
Gain Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points, accredited by The Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom. These can be used to count towards the distance learning element of any scheme that comes under the umbrella of The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges or any other scheme for which there is mutual recognition.
Receive a personal certificate to show your subject knowledge on course completion.
You get excellent value through our cost-effective prices. We can also offer you group discounts on larger purchases.
The course saves you time through the convenience of online availability. This lets you complete the interactive course at your own comfort.
You will stay up to date with the current effective batch-certification framework and its jurisdictional divergence: EudraLex Volume 4 Annex 16 (Certification by a QP and Batch Release, operational 15 April 2016); Chapter 1 (Pharmaceutical Quality System); Annex 21 (Importation of Medicinal Products, operational 21 August 2022); Annex 17 (Real-Time Release Testing and Parametric Release); Annex 19 (Reference and Retention Samples); the EU IMP framework of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/1569 with the new Annex 13 guideline; the UK Human Medicines Regulations 2012 (as amended); MHRA GMP guidance and the UK importation regime — the Responsible Person (import) on a WDA(H), the approved-countries route, 'UK Only' labelling from 1 January 2025 and the UK-resident QP on a UK MIA; the GB versus NI IMP split (Great Britain under Directive 2003/94/EC, Northern Ireland under Regulation (EU) 2017/1569); the Mutual Recognition Agreements whose scope varies by country and product type; and ICH Q9(R1) and ICH Q10 — as our training courses are constantly monitored, reviewed and updated. Drafts and consultations, such as the Great Britain future-strategy-for-batch-testing consultation, are identified as NOT law. Positions were verified in July 2026 and must be re-verified against the sources themselves, and for the relevant jurisdiction, before use.
The course content is Whitehall Training editorial material, developed to reflect established practice in QP batch certification, importation and release across the EU/EEA and UK frameworks — the way certification decisions are actually reasoned and defended, and the failure modes that appear when certification, release and supply are blurred or a jurisdiction is left unstated. It is built around a single fictional case study, NorthStar Medicines Ltd and its product Cardizen, with a canonical set of sites, scenarios and decisions, so that every certification, importation and disposition decision in the course is one the learner can reason through. Regulations, directives and GMP guidance are paraphrased and clause-referenced; they are never reproduced, and nothing in the course is legal advice or a regulator endorsement.






