Glossary

Data Integrity

The degree to which data stays complete, consistent, accurate, and trustworthy from creation to disposal.

Details

Data integrity is the state in which data remains complete, consistent, accurate, and trustworthy across the whole lifecycle and keeps the ALCOA+ attributes. The central inspection findings are missing raw data or metadata, shared accounts, selective reporting, deletion and reprocessing traces that were never reviewed, and backups whose restoration was never tested. Check data governance, the system inventory, privileges and audit trails, raw data review, and retention, backup, and recovery evidence.

Related sections

Related terms

Real inspection findings

Findings from regulators' inspection documents in which this term appears.

  1. Of these, one was classified as critical and found in the area of data integrity controls in the QC laboratory.
    EMA · EU GMP NCR (EudraGMDP) · 2024-03-06
  2. Significant data integrity gaps in the QC laboratory were of critical concern, demonstrating a failure to ensure traceability, security, and control of electronic data.
    EMA · EU GMP NCR (EudraGMDP) · 2025-09-10
  3. Critical data integrity issues were observed, undermining the reliability of manufacturing and quality control data.
    EMA · EU GMP NCR (EudraGMDP) · 2026-05-04
See 48 findings that mention this term

Source

WHO Quality Assurance of Medicines Terminology Database; WHO guideline on data integrity