Quality culture

Quality Month at MyoSite

November was World Quality Month, and Cook MyoSite celebrated with several activities exploring the many ways we prioritize quality in our business, research, and clinical trials.

Quali-TEA Time

The month kicked off with Quali-TEA Time, a lunchtime gathering hosted by MyoSite’s Quality team (Quality Assurance and Quality Control). After tea, pastries, and a quality-themed presentation, employees competed in Quality Jeopardy. The SmarTEA Pants team prevailed in a tight race against Team RoyalTea.

Being quality oriented

Moriah Johngrass, a Quality Assurance analytical methods specialist, joined MyoSite in 2018 after several years in the pharmaceutical industry. Before she came to MyoSite, though, some of her employers had failed to adequately emphasize the importance of quality.

“The way this company is set up, it’s very quality oriented,” Moriah said. “We file a lot of deviations for things that, at my last job, they would overlook. We police ourselves a lot, which is good. People are very honest.”

Throughout the month, the Quality team asked employees to consider what the idea of quality meant to their departments. Each department responded in poster form, with designs and messages that reflected the many ways high quality standards affect the work and culture at MyoSite.

Quality Culture

MyoSite also hosted Brian Neely, the president and principle consultant with Brian Neely & Associates, a consulting firm serving the biologics and pharmaceutical industries. Neely has over 40 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and 35 years of experience in quality assurance.

Neely presented on the theme of “quality culture,” which he defined as “the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of an organization and of those individuals in an organization related to delivering quality products to the patient.”

Lori Baker, the Quality Assurance manager, explained why Neely’s presentation was so important to MyoSite.

“A quality culture is not a choice in our industry; it is a necessity,” Lori said. “It is our way of life at Cook MyoSite. Patients are relying on us to supply them a safe product that will help them have a better quality of life. We must operate in a manner that always keeps quality a priority and our patients safe.”

Celebrating quality

The Quality Month celebrations at MyoSite concluded with a potluck and a dessert bake-off. The potluck was a great success, with dozens of dishes from apple cider meatballs to a Guatemalan-style curry.  Product Development specialist Stacey Brower won the dessert bake-off from the judges’ perspectives, but Quality Assurance associate Haley Clark took home the MyoSite People’s Choice prize.

Quality Month was a fun celebration, but more importantly, it was a reminder that quality reaches beyond the procedures found in Quality System documents. At MyoSite, quality is an underlying principle that guides all of our efforts to advance the science of regenerative medicine.