Software in Medical Devices, by MD101 Consulting

We had in a previous article an overview of IEC 82304-1 Health software -- Part 1: General requirements for product safety, its scope and its relationships with other standards like IEC 62304.
This article presents more in details (but not too much, we're not going to rephrase the standard) the requirements of IEC 82304-1.

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.

In the last article, we saw the concerns about the reliability of wireless connections and how to handle them.
Today, we are going to have a look at something quite important for mobile platforms: usability and humans factors engineering (HFE).

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.

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, medical device manufacturers have to adhere to these standards. Full stop.

Let's see what these standards are.