Joyce Hansen (J&J) joins the iia Board. 

  

Joyce Hansen joined Johnson & Johnson as Vice President of Sterility Assurance in 2012. She is responsible for providing strategic vision, leadership and governance for sterility assurance and lifecycle management for sterile products and is also responsible for the microbial control of non-sterile products across Johnson & Johnson.   

Joyce is a recognized industry leader in sterilization practices with over 35 years' experience in sterility assurance. She is experienced in the areas of radiation (gamma, electron beam and X-ray) and ethylene oxide sterilization. 

Joyce spent six years working for Baxter Healthcare Corporation as Vice President, Sterility Assurance and Sterilization Core Technical Competency Champion. She also held sterilization R&D and/or management positions at Sherwood Davis & Geck, Isomedix, and Becton Dickinson & Company.

Joyce is involved in a number of industry activities that are responsible for developing industry standards for sterility assurance. She previously served as Convenor of the ISO Working Group on Radiation Sterilization and as co-chair of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) working groups to develop standards on Radiation Sterilization, SAL, and Microbiological Methods. 

iia is changing. During the past 18 months the Association has made particularly good progress in expanding its membership base and improving its representation of all technologies and geographies. At the last IMRP meeting in Shanghai in late 2013 iia established four working groups - Technology, Food Irradiation, Healthcare, and Polymers.

The aim of the Association is to continue to expand and grow its membership base and to effectively represent the needs and interests of the irradiation community. A core aim of the Association is to promote the safe and beneficial use of radiation technology. In order to achieve this we will continue to Advocate on behalf of the industry and promote Education and Communication.

The Association continues to improve its web presence. In addition to the website iia has a growing presence on Linkedin and will be exploring ways to increase its social media presence over the coming months. 

The new structure is:

• Paul Wynne         - General Manager
• Yves Henon         - Deputy General Manager
• John Newcombe - Treasurer & Secretary
   

All of the above have Association wide responsibilities

• Yves Henon           - Deputy Chair Food Irradiation WG
• John Woolston       - Deputy Chair of the Healthcare WG
• Paul Wynne            - Deputy Chair of the Technology WG
• Shamshad Ahmed - Deputy Chair of the Polymer WG
• Gustavo Varca        - Science, Social Media and Networking

ISO TC198 meeting in Sydney (Australia) -  The Sterility Assurance Task Group had its first face to face meeting in early April 2014. The meeting was well attended and the draft New Work Item Proposal was finalized for submission to the TC at the closing Plenary.  The scope is currently limited to strictly providing guidance on risk assessments for alternative SAL; this directly responds to the need for guidance to the note in EN556 Clause 4.1. 

AAMI WG90 meeting in Washington (USA) - The plan is for WG90 to move forward with the project to revise ST67, in this case including aseptic processing in the scope of the risk assessment for alternative SALs.  

Parentral Drug Association (PDA) Annual meeting in San Antonia - Possible opportunities to connect the Assurance of Sterility issue with the pharma world surfaced. Abbott Vascular's bioresorbable scaffold was presented by Byron Lambert as an example of the sterilization challenges of a sensitive combination product.  

Members can read full comments by visiting the iia website and accessing the recent news item.

The creation of this "group" on Linked In represents another initiative by iia to facilitate debate and information exchange for members of the irradiation community. Discussions have been set to be private so that members can exchange views knowing that they are only visible to other members of the group. A pad lock should be visible which confirms the locked status of the group. If you are not yet a member of the International Irradiation Forum we invite members of the irradiation community to join us and to become part of the debate.

We will be asking seeking your input on the next IMRP shortly - if you want to express a view you will need to join our Forum so that you can comment.