IEC 62304 outlines the guiding principles for the development of medical software. It is the gold standards for medical device companies, but its importance goes beyond legal manufacturers and established medical software suppliers. In the vast majority of cases, software embedded in a device (or a device itself) use abundant OTS (Off The Shelf) code, […]

Written together with Mike Rink of Comalatech  Until recently, the Medical Device industry was comprised of a handful of large and well-established hardware manufacturing organizations. As those devices have become more software-driven, so too have software development companies begun working closer with the medical device manufacturers. In addition to supplying software to those manufacturers, these […]

“If you can’t beat them, join them!” If your company has decided to enter the medical device market, and you are in charge of making this transition, one of the things you will have to implement sooner or later is a compliant quality system. It is not going to be an easy job, but on […]

Medical device risk mitigation actions aim at reducing the occurrence and/or the severity of the potential harm. Risk mitigations are equivalent to requirements. But unlike requirements coming from user needs or other higher level requirements, risk mitigations need special attention. Of course “Requirements shall be complete, unambiguous, able to be verified or validated, and not […]

One of the more controversial requirements of IEC 62304 is the probability of failure of medical device software during Risk Analysis. EN 62304:2006 paragraph 4.3 “Software Safety Classification” states “If the HAZARD could arise from a failure of the SOFTWARE SYSTEM to behave as specified, the probability of such failure shall be assumed to be […]