How Can Software SMEs Become Medical Device Software SMEs (original) (raw)

Software Process Improvement to assist Medical Device Software Development Organisations to comply with the amendments to the Medical Device Directive

A recent revision to the European Medical Device Directive (MDD) 2007/47/EC made fourteen amendments to the original directive (93/42/EEC). A number of these changes directly affect the de-velopment of software for use in healthcare. The most significant change in relation to medical device software development is that standalone software is now seen as an active medical device and should be developed following state of the art medical device software development processes. State of the art medical device software processes is understood within the industry as developing software in accordance with IEC 62304 and standards that are aligned with it. This paper identifies how changes to the MDD affect medical device software development companies and recommen-dations are made as to how medical device software development companies can conform to the latest regulatory requirements. Additionally, the paper provides an overview of how Medi SPICE is currently being developed to provide organisations with a single point of reference for the practices that should be implemented in order to produce regulatory compliant medical device software.

The Need for a Software Process Improvement Model for the Medical Device Industry

2007

Software is becoming an increasingly important aspect of medical devices and medical device regulation. Software enables highly complex systems to be built. However, complexity is the enemy of safety, therefore strict adherence to well documented processes is important within the domain of medical device software. Medical devices can only be marketed if compliance and approval from the appropriate regulatory bodies (e.g. the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) is achieved. This paper outlines the development of a software process improvement (SPI) model specifically for the medical device industry. The paper details how medical device regulations may be satisfied by adopting relevant practices from the Capability Maturity Model Integration ( CMMI®). Copyright © 2006 Praise Worthy Prize - All rights reserved.

Medical device software: defining key terms

2016

INTRODUCTION one of the areas of significant growth in medical devices has been the role of software - as an integral component of a medical device, as a standalone device and more recently as applications on mobile devices. The risk related to a malfunction of the standalone software used within healthcare is in itself not a criterion for its qualification or not as a medical device. It is therefore, necessary to clarify some criteria for the qualification of stand-alone software as medical devices Materials and methods: Ukrainian, European Union, United States of America legislation, Guidelines developed by European Commission and Food and Drug Administration's, recommendations represented by international voluntary group and scientific works. This article is based on dialectical, comparative, analytic, synthetic and comprehensive research methods. CONCLUSION the legal regulation of software which is used for medical purpose in Ukraine limited to one definition. In European Un...

Integrating Agile Practices with a Medical Device Software Development Lifecycle

The rate at which agile software development practices are being adopted is growing rapidly. Agile software development practices and methodologies appear to offer the silver bullet which can solve the problems associated with following plan driven software development lifecycles. Agile software development practices offer the possibility of achieving lower development costs, increased efficiency and improved software quality. However, there is currently a low rate of publicly available information that suggests there is widespread adoption of agile practices within the medical device software domain. This is largely due to the fact that software developed for medical devices includes challenges not faced when developing non safety critical software. As a result of these challenges, medical device software is typically developed using plan driven software development lifecycles. However, such lifecycles are quite rigid and cannot accommodate changes easily. Previous research has revealed that medical device software development projects can benefit from adopting agile practices whilst still maintaining the discipline associated with following plan driven development lifecycles. This paper outlines the challenges faced by developers when developing medical device software and how shortcomings in both agile and plan driven approaches can be resolved by following a mixed method approach to medical device software development.

Barriers to Adopting Agile Practices when Developing Medical Device Software

Agile methodologies such as XP and Scrum are founded upon the four values and twelve principles of agile software development. A software development project is only considered to be truly agile if these values and principles are followed. However, software developed for use in medical devices must be regulatory compliant and this can make the process of following a single agile methodology such as XP difficult to achieve. This paper outlines how we identified the barriers to agile adoption in the medical device software domain through performing a survey. These barriers include: lack of documentation; maintaining traceability; regulatory compliance; lack of up front planning and the process of managing multiple releases. Based on this research recommendations are also made as to how these barriers can be overcome.