On November 24th, the Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) published its first official list of validation rules for CDISC SDTM, ADaM and Define.xml. These long awaited rules cover conformance, reviewability and quality requirements, as described in the PMDA Technical Conformance Guide on Electronic Study Data Submissions. The rules will ensure that data conform to the standards and support ease of use and meaningful analysis.

The PMDA agency is asking sponsors to validate their study data before submission — using these published validation rules — and either correct any validation issues or explain why they could not be corrected in the data guide. PMDA has introduced new “Reject” rules, which, if violated, will cause the review to be suspended until issues are corrected. PMDA can also suspend review if explanations for certain issues are not provided.