Software in Medical Devices, by MD101 Consulting

The FDIS (final draft version) of IEC 62366-1 was released in November 2014. This version, also known as IEC 62366 2nd edition, is on the right track to be officially released in Q1 2015. It will supersede the IEC 62366:2007 + Amendment 1:2014.

Thanks to elsmar cove website, we know that the publication of the next version of ISO 13485 is postponed to 2016.
EDIT: elsmar cove forums is dead, see RIP elsmar cove.

Bye bye ISO 13485:2015,
Welcome ISO 13485:2016!

ISO/DIS 13485:2014 is the draft of the next version of ISO 13485. The final version should be published in 2015.
This new version brings a lot of new requirements for management of software related to medical devices. Let's see what's inside this draft!

Further reading to complete this long series about SOUP:
You can have a look at this excellent article about OTS/SOUP validation strategies.

Next week, we'll see Unique Device Identification (UDI) for software.

After having discussed about open-source software in the last post, we continue today this series about SOUP with the case of standalone software.

We saw in the first article of this series, what is a SOUP and what is not a SOUP, according to IEC 62304.
Then we continued in the second article by having a look at OS's and drivers.
Let's now see how to deal with runtimes.

No need to reinvent the wheel when developing software. Everybody uses software made by 3rd parties, to begin with the operating system and general purpose libraries.
IEC 62304 has specific requirements about 3rd party software. What are these requirements and how do they affect software development and maintenance?

The FAQ related to the Implementation of EN 62304 with respect to MDD 93/42/EEC was released by Team NB, the association of Notified Bodies.
You'll find in this FAQ many hot subjects I already mentioned in this blog:

• When software is medical device,
• What is software validation,
• SOUP and legacy software,
• Software risk assessment.

This FAQ shows that the state-of-the-art is still evolving. But I think that it has reached a point of consistency and stability. Many questions in the FAQ hadn't clear answers one or two years back.

Keep going!

Manufacturers of medical devices often ask themselves the obvious question:
Is it mandatory to be compliant both with IEC 60601-1 and IEC 62304?

Similarly, manufacturers of in vitro diagnosis devices ask themselves:
Are my devices in the scope of IEC 62304?

Obviously, medical devices (MD) with electric or electronic components are in the scope of IEC 60601-1. And in-vitro diagnosis devices (IVD) with electric or electronic components are in the scope of IEC 61010-1.

Do MD and IVD that embed software, fall in the scope of IEC 62304?
This is not so obvious.

We've seen in the last post how to manage changes in legacy software. Let's see it from another point of view: the type of legacy software.