Inflation of software medical devices - part 2
By Mitch on Friday, 30 March 2012, 10:51 - Regulations - Permalink
Today I’m going to talk about the inflation to regulations in the world of software for medical devices. In my previous post, I had a look at the inflation of standards for medical devices. As the medical devices industry is heavily controlled by regulations, they deserve a dedicated post.
Regulations
The most well-known (or widespread?) regulations are the 21CFR of the USA
and the 93/42 directive of the European Union. The FDA has recently increased
its number of inspections, mainly in foreigner countries. Even if FDA lacks of
agents to do so, the trend is here. And an inspection of the FDA can be
compared to being sued. If one day you have one, you’re not going to enjoy it!
The regulations themselves don’t change but the FDA will to increase the law
enforcement by foreign companies.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a new directive on medical devices is
being drafted by the European commission. The content of this directive is
still under construction but some new features are already known. The
classification rules will change, for instance products which contain
biological substances will be class III. The list of essential requirements
will contain new ones, especially about software. This new directive should be
released by 2013 or early 2014 and be active a few years later (remember that
2007/47 directive became mandatory in 2010).
What about software?
Focusing on software, we can see the following trend: With the
multiplication of standalone software, the FDA and the European Commission felt
the urgency to release guidance documents about these kinds of medical devices.
The affected types of software are Clinical Decision Support (CDS), like
Medical Device Data Systems (MDDS) and mobile Health (mHealth) apps. In
general, every kind of software, which belongs to Health IT (HIT) is being
watched by regulation agencies.
The excellent article
FDA's approach to clinical decision support software depicts the situation
with the FDA and the lack of official position about standalone software. FDA
decides to regulate almost case by case. However, the FDA issued a
draft guidance document about mobile apps. Needless to say that they
deserved one, given the maelstrom of new medical apps produced by the emergence
of smartphones. The EU hasn’t released an equivalent document to the FDA
guidance on mobile apps yet. Its approach is broader, with the
MEDDEV 2.1/6 about qualification and classification of standalone
software.
An attempt of synthesis
It’s difficult to quickly do a synthesis on trends about software in a short
blog article. But the web is a source of precious data. The COCIR (a lobby of
European radiological and HIT industry) made a
presentation about regulation of medical software, which contains a fair
good attempt of synthesis. Read it, it’s very instructive!
The concept of inflation of regulations should not be seen as the
multiplication of regulations but more as the mix of three phenomena. National
agencies are strengthening the existing regulations. They’re increasing the
monitoring and control of manufacturers and distributors. And in the case of
software, they’re trying to adapt the regulations to the fast moving world of
Health IT.
It's too early to have a worldwide consensus on how to regulate Health IT. Wait
and see.
