Staying at the forefront of the medical device industry takes work - a lot of it, in fact. Communication with R&Q's peers in the industry is in large part how our employees do it, and a big part of that is addressing hot topics in the industry. R&Q's own Client Solutions Advisor Christine Santagate was featured in MassDevice's May 2016 issue of Medical Design and Outsourcing in an article titled, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Starting a Medical Device Company." The publication serves as a fantastic how-to guide for startup companies. Here's what she had to say.
Just this week the world's first 3D-printed office opened in Dubai. It took all of 17 days to print a 2,700-square-foot building at half the price of conventional methods. In short, this 3D printing thing has some legs... and we mean that literally, too.
3D printing is definitely a hot topic across the medical device industry. This ground-breaking technology that began in the 80s has advanced into a valuable tool for manufacturers, and even earned itself draft guidance from the FDA earlier this month.
On Friday, January 10, 2014 the FDA issued a final rule, which amends the premarket approval (PMA) regulations. The final rule requires “submission of information on pediatric subpopulations that suffer from the disease or condition that a device is intended to treat”. 1 The final rule also defines “pediatric patients” and “pediatric subpopulations”. Per the final rule, “pediatric patients” is defined as a patient who is 21 years old or younger at the time of treatment or diagnosis. “Pediatric subpopulation” means on for the following populations: neonate, infants, children, or adolescents.
The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a new initiative targeted at giving the patients a voice in the agency’s decision making process on medical devices. I became aware of this effort by the FDA when recently reading this article which describes CDRH’s program called Patient Preference Initiative.
Sometimes changes in process can have a dramatic effect on product registration. There are several events that can cause a re-registration of a registered medical device. A new product name, part number, material, manufacturing site, country of origin, business name or manufacturing process are common re-registration triggers. It all depends on the specific regulations of the country involved.
This week I will provide some information about labeling in India. CDSCO (Central Drugs Standard Control Organization) regulates the medical device industry in India. Only medical devices that CDSCO has put in the “Notified Devices Category” require registration. There are very few product types on this list and they are regulated as “drugs”. Registration is not required for import of non-notified medical devices in India. Please refer to the link below for a list of the notified device categories that must be registered in India:
The latest mobile medical application news on the industry's collective mind is the issuance of an "It has come to our attention..." letter sent to Biosense Technologies in India, essentially questioning why Biosense has not obtained 510(k) clearance for their uChek mobile application. The device is a mobile medical application for phones that takes a picture of urinalysis strips and compares the color against a standard to make a determination about the status of a patients urine. It also includes a box that controls external light to ensure better quality of the results. From a "fan" standpoint, it's an awesome device and technology. You can see it demo-ed during the TED talk given by the company's CEO.
RQS team members pride ourselves on focusing on customer success, and it is with that in mind that I am honored to announce our most recent 510(K) submission was approved this week! We are proud to obtain clearance, but swell with pride because of how we obtained it.
In my last post “Who’s watching your MedWatching”, I commented on some of the common issues manufacturers have with their MDR and complaint handling systems. It’s useful to know what people are doing wrong, but I think it is equally important to know how to solve those issues. So in this post, I’m going to point you to two very good resources that I found that give further insight into how to know if you have a problem, and how to fix your system.
