Helen Forsdyke has been part of for Johnson & Johnson for over 20 years and is currently the Senior Director, Regulatory Compliance, partnering with the Johnson & Johnson commercial entities in EMEA and distribution centres globally to ensure End-2-End Quality Compliance. In this role, Helen is responsible for ensuring a proactive approach to Quality Management, working to mitigate potential compliance risks, and specifically working with the Commercial Quality teams to focus on customer requirements. As part of the J&J Regulatory Compliance organization, Helen has responsibility for monitoring the external environment, with focus on changing regulations impacting Quality & Compliance, partnering with Regulatory, and Government Affairs in advocacy, and then working with the business to implement changes.
Helen has a strong background in Quality Management Systems, working in Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Combination Product areas to gain the widest experience of the applicability of Quality System requirements to our products. She has hosted multiple Health Authority and Notified Body inspections under a variety of regulations, specifically for Medical Devices this list includes ISO13485 & ISO9001, USA FDA QSR 820, EU MDR/MDD/IVD, and MDSAP. More recently, Helen has led the Regulatory Compliance activities to ensure inspection readiness for the EU Medical Devices Regulation at the Legal Manufacturing sites globally, including the execution of a readiness internal audit program at all sites ahead of the Notified Body certification audits. Helen has presented at several industry conferences on the practical application of the EU MDR for a large-scale manufacturer, sharing experiences and lessons learned in meeting the new regulatory regime. Currently, she is working with the business to integrate the requirements of multiple changing regulatory requirements including UK Medical Devices Regulation, Swiss Medical Devices Ordinance and Eurasian Medical Devices Regulation.
Helen has a degree in Applied Biology from The University of Hertfordshire, UK, and has a background in industrial microbiology. She started her Johnson & Johnson career in 1998 as the site Microbiologist, with responsibility for a large-scale gamma irradiation plant alongside both steam and aseptic manufacturing processes. She has held positions of increasing responsibility within J&J, including being the Management Representative for a device manufacturing Quality System, leading Quality Operations, Regulatory Affairs, Quality Laboratories, Design Quality and Supplier Quality Teams. Helen is a member of the J&J Microbiological Quality & Sterility Assurance Leadership Team as the Compliance partner, maintaining her passion for microbiology.