Supporting best practice through education and training

Actions

• Promote stakeholder understanding of the purpose and components of evaluations through education.
• Use novel validated risk evaluation methods and processes adopted by other regulators.
• Conduct systematic peer reviews of evaluations and peer review exchange for more complex evaluations with international regulators.

Scientific capability

We will build on our strengths and capacity through:

• implementing our science strategy
• adopting peer review processes that ensure scientific integrity
• developing assessment tools and guidance
• engaging in national and international initiatives such as new assessment methodologies (NAMS)
• exchanging information to align with international harmonisation efforts.

New assessment methodologies 

Consistent with international practice, we use a combination of methods and data sources to inform our chemical evaluations, and monitor developments in these areas, including:

• quantitative structure activity/use relationships (QSAR/QSUR)
• read-across
• in chemico
• in vitro
• in vivo
• adverse outcome pathways (AOPs)
• -omic technologies.

Learn about the ban on the use of animal data

International and academic engagement

To maintain best practice, we will actively engage with our international counterparts:

• ensuring that our skills and knowledge base keep pace with international developments
• enhancing evaluation findings through data exchange, sharing of training materials and peer review
• using the International Uniform Chemical Information Database (IUCLID) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) QSAR Toolbox).    

We will link with academic institutions to: 

• strengthen our engagement with research and develop knowledge about chemicals
• develop new assessment tools and methodologies
• consolidate data  
• improve our regulatory capability
• improve opportunities for knowledge transfer
• increase university students’ awareness of regulatory science as a career option.

Maximising use of information by applying chemical informatics

Chemical informatics is key to supporting the high-throughput and accelerated evaluation of large numbers of chemicals.

What is chemical informatics?

The regulatory application of chemical informatics involves:

• organising
• quality-assuring
• visualising and
• applying large amounts of electronic information to support prioritisation, risk assessment, and recommendations for risk management of chemicals. 

Chemical informatics means we can maximise the use and re-use of large amounts of quality assured chemical information to optimise the resources we need to evaluate chemicals. It also helps us complete and publish high-quality chemical evaluations in a timely way. Work to further develop our existing capabilities in chemical informatics will be an essential part of delivering our evaluations.