This article applies to software development and validation and discusses the security and usability engineering aspects of software. It uses the term “software” for software as a medical device (SaMD) and medical device software (MDSW), including MDSW that is embedded on, drives, or influences the use of a hardware medical device, software accessories, and software components.  Keywords ‒ agile, development, incremental, software, static, waterfall   Standards an...

Software has become an increasingly critical area of healthcare product development. Rapid technological advancement has resulted in substantial changes to software function and acceptance, leading to a growing number of novel medical devices capable of informing, driving, or replacing clinical choices, or directly providing therapy. Regulatory authorities expect that clinical evidence for a software as medical device (SaMD) is generated with a scientific level of rigor th...

Risk management is focusing increasingly on cybersecurity related ri sks, which can have an impact on human health, environment, and property. With the increasing threats of cyberattacks on the critical infrastructures, including healthcare, the need for secure products and services is becoming more prominent. Recent global development in which cyberwarfare has become a major issue further emphasize the need for good security management, as the chain is only as strong as...

A new analysis from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy outlines the data elements that real-world data (RWD) sources would need to capture in order to evaluate the performance of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled clinical decision support tools, as well as the ongoing challenges related to data quality, privacy and security.   AI-enabled clinical decision support tools can be difficult to evaluate after deployment because of the non-standardized nature of el...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final rulemaking that eliminates certain software intended to transfer, store or display clinical laboratory tests from being regulated as medical devices.   This action was taken to conform to the medical software provisions of the 21 st Century Cures Act , enacted on 13 December 2016. The law amended the definition of a device in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) to exclude such software; th...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a request for comment on Monday that sets forth a proposal for a new framework on the regulation of software applications for use with one or more prescription drug products.   The agency’s newly adopted digital health approaches “are still in their early stages,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Monday in remarks at the Reagan Udall Foundation annual public meeting. “A lot of these technologies haven’t advanced as...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday unveiled three guidance documents – two draft and one final – that clarify which types of software will be regulated. One of the draft guidances, the 13-page “ Clinical and Patient Decision Support Software ,” outlines which types of clinical decision support software (CDS), which can compare patient-specific signs with available clinical guidelines to recommend treatments, would no longer be defined as a medic...

US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb took the stage Tuesday at AdvaMed’s MedTech conference in San Jose, California, unveiling the nine companies selected among 103 applicants to participate in the agency’s precertification pilot for digital health applications. FDA  launched the pre-cert pilot  in July as part of the agency’s  Digital Health Innovation Action Plan. The pilot participants, representing a range of companies and technology in the ...

An official from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the agency is working to finalize two draft guidances detailing when a new 510(k) is required for changes to medical devices and their software before the 8 November 2017 deadline set by the 21st Century Cures Act . In August 2016, FDA released the two draft guidances , five years after the agency's first attempt to replace its 1997 guidance on the topic. But, FDA withdrew the 2011 draft guidance after ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday released new details on its plans for regulating digital health technologies, including more information about its upcoming pilot program to pre-certify software-based medical devices. According to the agency's newly released Digital Health Innovation Action Plan , FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) plans to improve the landscape for digital health technologies by developing guidance on the medic...

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Thursday announced an upcoming pilot program that would create a third-party certification program under which lower-risk digital health products could be marketed without FDA premarket review and higher-risk products could be marketed with a streamlined FDA review. The pilot, part of a new approach to regulating digital health tools, would help to certify, according to Gottlieb, whether a company ...

With ongoing work on guidance related to software as a medical device, and a new dedicated unit to digital health coming to the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), the agency is slowly but surely dipping its toe into the rapidly advancing field. Bakul Patel, ‎associate center director for digital health at FDA, told attendees at MedCon in Cincinnati on Thursday that current work is directed at funneling through abou...