QMI and ACRES to Partner on Quality Management Education for Clinical Research

The Quality Management Institute (QMI) and the Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) have formed a strategic alliance to promote effective education, training and implementation of quality management science throughout the global clinical research enterprise.

QMI is a not-for-profit training and consulting organization dedicated to helping small businesses and non-profit-organizations overcome challenges of their work culture through systemic integration of quality management and leadership principles. While based in the US, its global vision is to “reach the world with quality management education” via virtual classrooms and facilitated online education. QMI endeavors to fulfill the traditional goals of quality management—to improve products and services—while making total quality management an affordable small business technology with significant human-resource benefits.

Through its alliance with ACRES, QMI will make its educational products and services widely available and affordable to all stakeholders, including small businesses, in the medicines development and health-research communities. The partnership creates a strong synergy as QMI joins other ACRES stakeholders and allies from the public and private sector to address clinical research and health-related challenges throughout the world, especially in developing countries.

ACRES President and CEO, Dr. Greg Koski, welcomed QMI to its rapidly growing alliance of committed organizations collaboratively building a global system for clinical research. “Quality management has become a science, a discipline that must be learned and successfully applied if it is to be effective. With a lifetime of quality management experience in aerospace, business, and the nonprofit sector, Dr. Larry Kennedy, President of QMI, brings a broad perspective on management reform processes and the development of public and private collaborations.”

“QMI’s commitment to developing compassionate, knowledgeable leaders who can deliver the precision provided by quality management principles with a “human touch” will promote and support professionalism and reliable science, values so fundamental to ACRES vision,” added Matthew Whalen, ACRES Chief Operating Officer.

“Greg Koski and the global team at ACRES have catalyzed a quantum leap forward in the field of clinical research by creating practical, reliable processes that will deliver broadly understood but too-often underutilized health and management theories into practice. Dr. Koski’s leadership in bringing together a diverse but clearly focused group of stakeholders and developers is a tribute to both his skill and compassionate heart. I look forward to working with him to create customized training solutions for this powerful vision,” remarked Dr. Kennedy.

“Competency-based education and training for all clinical research professionals is essential, as in all healthcare related professions, and quality management education is no exception,” noted ACRES VP for Systems Integration and Professionalism, Dr. Honorio Silva, formerly Vice President, Science and Medical Professional Development at Pfizer. “QMI will be one of a cadre of ACRES Global Training Affiliates.”

As a Global Training Affiliate, QMI will offer its curriculum of Quality Management Education via their “virtual” classrooms and facilitated online education to ACRES affiliated corporate stakeholders, clinical site leaders and other constituents. Under the terms of their agreement, QMI will donate a portion of the proceeds to support ACRES global mission.

Operating in the public interest, ACRES is leveraging the expertise and investments of research stakeholders world-wide to build and maintain a global system for clinical trials that are responsibly conducted according to the highest standards of safety, quality and efficiency and to align ethical principles with good business practices to facilitate responsible biomedical product development and health research to benefit all people.