Annual Meeting of the Rapid Microbiological Methods Group Advisory Board

The annual meeting of the RMM Advisory Board was hosted by Roche Diagnostics in Penzberg, Germany. Chairmen Dr. Sven M. Deutschmann opened the session with a review of the activities 2010 and an overview about the remarks and proposals of the participants of the RMM Conference last December. Amongst others, the following topics were discussed during the meeting:

1. Addendum to the glossary of the conference binders with RMM abbreviations:
Axel Schroeder develops a database with access for the board members to collect and add RMM relevant abbreviations. After finishing the glossary will be added to conference binders.

2. Addition of smaller discussion groups in the conference:
The board members agreed that smaller discussion groups during the conference are not manageable. A better way for facilitating discussions about specific topics in smaller groups would be pre- or post-conference workshops.

3. The possibility to compile a list of the "most frequent failures" during implementation of RMMs from authority perspective should be discussed with authority representatives.

4. The board would like to involve group members more actively. A way to accomplish this could be through surveys. Possible questions include

• which systems they use
• for which products
• for IPC, batch release or others
• approved or submitted applications
• do they receive support form the authorities
• experiences with special issues e.g. stressed micro organisms
• LIMS Connection

With this information the group very likely gets a more detailed idea on the interests, systems in use etc. - and it intends on taking advantage of this information to schedule further activities like subgroups, pre- or post-conference workshops.