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Friday 6 July 2012
By Mitch on Friday 6 July 2012, 13:17 - Processes
Are agile methods compatible with the constraints of development set by IEC
62304 standard of class C software?
After a
series of three posts about agile methods and risks analysis. I focus in
this post on IEC 62304 class C critical software.
Saturday 23 June 2012
By Mitch on Saturday 23 June 2012, 16:40 - Processes
We've seen in my last post that it's possible to have agile development methods combined with a risk management process. To be compliant with ISO 14971 standard, a risk management plan that describes this process along iterations, has to be written. And a risk assessment report has to be created in iteration 0 and updated in every iteration, by following the risk management process like the one found in figure 1 or figure B.1 of ISO 14971 standard.
Sunday 17 June 2012
By Mitch on Sunday 17 June 2012, 18:29 - Processes
This post is the continuation of the post of last week.
We've seen in that post that fixing bugs during software maintenance is like a small chunk of design, excepted that software specifications do not change. Therefore risk management process when fixing bugs is very close to risk management process during design, without the initial assessment of risks at the beginning of the software development cycle.
Saturday 9 June 2012
By Mitch on Saturday 9 June 2012, 16:45 - Processes
This post comes after a series of three posts where I exposed my thoughts about development of software medical devices with agile methods.
These posts were focussed on software development. Risk management deserves its own series of posts. Here is the first of three.
Friday 9 March 2012
By Mitch on Friday 9 March 2012, 13:45 - Standards
Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about money and quantitative easing! I let people with better knowledge in economics (that makes a lot of people!) do that.
When I talk about inflation, I mean the inflation of software medical devices in their number and variety, which creates a collateral inflation in the number of regulations, guidances, standards, and the like.
This post is the first of a series of three. In this first post, I focus on the inflation of standards. The next one will be on the inflation of regulations and the last one on the inflation of medical devices.
Friday 18 November 2011
By Mitch on Friday 18 November 2011, 18:10 - Standards
The homologation of a medical device is a complex task and can become a nightmare with devices with a high level of risk. It involves many standards and regulations, different from one country to another: FDA in the USA, CE Mark in Europe, CMDCAS in Canada, KFDA in South Korea, and so on …
Fortunately, most of these regulations have common requirements and rely on ISO standards, the most important standards being ISO 13485 and ISO 14971. If you meet the requirements of these standards, you increase your chances of passing the homologations for the devices with low risk. For devices with high risk, these standards are (almost) mandatory.
Tuesday 1 November 2011
By Mitch on Tuesday 1 November 2011, 23:00 - Standards
Here is a short description of ISO and IEC standards related to software and medical devices.
The starting point is legal. Government agencies give the authorizations to manufacturers to sell their devices. These agencies rely on standards to ensure that the device was designed and manufactured in a good and safe way. Given these regulations, private companies have to adhere to these standards. Full stop.
Let's see what these standards are.
Two ISO standards are of high importance for software medical devices: ISO 13485 and ISO 14971. They can be seen as the topmost standards for medical devices. They are very generic and apply to every medical device, from the simplest plaster to the most complex surgeon robot. As they are so generic, they don’t give a clue about software. Other standards do.