Medical Device Design & Development
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES
-
![Gates To Heaven]( "How To Eliminate The Gate In Medtech Product Development’s Phase-Gate Approach")
How To Eliminate The Gate In Medtech Product Development’s Phase-Gate ApproachWe all know the phase-gate approach to medical device development is cumbersome and slow – the exact opposite of what’s needed for products essential to critical treatment or prevention of disease or chronic conditions. The good news is that there are ways to make dramatic improvements to the efficiency of the product development process while maintaining project phase controls.
We read studies showing that professionals who are successful and hold top positions in our industry possess certain traits: intelligence, commitment to our jobs, determination, etc. But those traits could describe many professionals. So, what is it that makes us unique and a good fit for this industry?
The FDA is moving forward with its Data Modernization Action Plan, the next leg of the Technology Modernization Action Plan. As such, you'll need to prepare yourself for the influx of questions, audits, observations, warning letters, and more. Here's what you can do to position yourself for success.
The first article in this series discussed the background and a few high-level observations of the FDA’s summaries of its medical device quality system inspections. This article digs into the details of the FY2020 observations. What were the top 10 most-cited issues, and what are the takeaways you can implement?
The ICH 31000 guidance defines a risk as the “impact of uncertainty on objectives.” As a follow-up to his article on why we should replace the RPN with the adjusted risk likelihood (ARL), Mark Witcher describes how system risk structures can be used to simultaneously understand and manage both risks and benefits.
WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
-
![production]( "Manufacturing Process: Tools For A Successful Startup")
Manufacturing Process: Tools For A Successful StartupMedbio offers a number of tips to follow for a successful startup in designing and producing injection-molded parts.
Injection molding has numerous key parameters that must tie together in order to make a repeatable molding process. Medbio offers a solution that utilizes cavity pressure curves, key process parameter tolerances, and automation to automatically reject parts that do not make the cut in in the molding process.
Designing a product with consideration for the manufacturing process can reduce production times and costs, as well as simplify development of transport, storage, and protection solutions.
A global medical device company came to Donatelle for help perfecting a silicon seal component to meet the new ISO 27186:2010 standard. In this case, a seal with micro-features is needed to reliably isolate the four-pole electrical contacts between the pacemaker and defibrillator and fit inside the 6.3 mm medical device.
Devices such as introducer sheaths, delivery catheters, endoscopes, and neurovascular microcatheters aim to minimize trauma during insertion and removal, reduce tissue inflammation, enable maneuverability through tortuous blood vessels, and improve patient comfort. Surface properties should promote smooth movement between certain device components.
DESIGN COMPONENTS & SERVICES
ProMed Pharma is a division of ProMed that specializes in manufacturing polymer-based drug-releasing implantable medical device, and combination device components. ProMed’s 25 years of experience working with silicone-based implantables, combination products, and solid implants has allowed them to leverage their molding expertise for established and start-up medical device and pharmaceutical companies.
Engineers who design medical devices or equipment are constantly tasked with finding highly reliable solutions for the systems they’re creating. High reliability interconnect solutions are no exception, particularly where electrophysiology catheters, patient monitors, MRIs, intravascular ultrasounds, defibrillators, infusion pumps and laboratory equipment are concerned.
Parker Precision Fluidics offers a line of miniature pumps used in medical devices requiring precision and high performance. These miniature pumps offer a variety of features like a compact efficient design, low power, small size, and light weight ideal for medical device applications like patient monitoring, clinical diagnostics, analytical chemistry, portable gas detection, and medical instrumentation.
MEDICAL DEVICE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Medical device design and development is the cyclical process of creating a device for a specific task or set of tasks, and then continuously reevaluating its effectiveness and improving upon it until the device reaches obsolescence. Design and development begins with ideation and the creation of a concept that, if found to be both fiscally and clinically viable, is then designed, engineered, and prototyped. This preclinical period includes bench testing — accomplished through simulated use of the product — and animal testing, along with any necessary redesign work.
Throughout the process, the proposed medical device, and the process by which it will be manufactured, is examined for flaws that may negatively impact the device’s safety, market viability, regulatory acceptance, customer satisfaction, usability, or profitability. Any shortcomings are corrected, and the improvements applied to the final design. Due to the wireless connectivity capabilities of many modern medical devices, cybersecurity and interoperability also must be incorporated into the design. Clinical testing is conducted, using human subjects, to further expose flaws and confirm product strengths. Once both the product design and the manufacturing process have been validated and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), production and commercialization of a device may begin.
LATEST HEADLINES
-
Noninvasive Optical Sensors Provide Real-Time Brain Monitoring After Stroke2/21/2018
Each year, nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. experience a stroke, and almost 90 percent of those are ischemic strokes in which a clot cuts off blood flow to part of the brain. To prevent further injury, blood flow to the brain must be restored as quickly as possible.
-
Embrace Becomes First FDA-Cleared Seizure-Monitoring Smart Watch2/5/2018
Empatica Inc has received clearance from the FDA for Embrace, its award-winning smart watch. Embrace uses AI (advanced machine learning) to monitor for the most dangerous kinds of seizures, known as "grand mal" or "generalized tonic-clonic" seizures, and send an alert to summon caregivers' help.
-
Researchers Create Fiber Optic Sensors That Dissolve In The Body2/5/2018
For the first time, researchers have fabricated sensing elements known as fiber Bragg gratings inside optical fibers designed to dissolve completely inside the body.
-
NUS Researchers Develop Wireless Light Switch For Targeted Cancer Therapy1/30/2018
A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a way to wirelessly deliver light into deep regions of the body to activate light-sensitive drugs for photodynamic therapy (PDT).
-
TU Wien Develops New Semiconductor Processing Technology1/22/2018
Extremely fine porous structures with tiny holes - resembling a kind of sponge at nano level - can be generated in semiconductors.
-
Tyndall, Sanmina Partner To Develop Sub-GHz Wearable Health Monitoring Platform1/10/2018
Tyndall and Sanmina Corporation have announced a research collaboration, which will focus on the development of a novel wireless technology for a commercial wrist-worn health-monitoring platform.
-
An Organ-On-A-Chip Device That Models Heart Disease1/2/2018
When studying diseases or testing potential drug therapies, researchers usually turn to cultured cells on Petri dishes or experiments with lab animals, but recently, researchers have been developing a different approach: small, organ-on-a-chip devices that mimic the functions of human organs, serving as potentially cheaper and more effective tools.
-
Nanowire Device Holds Promise To Detect Cancer With A Urine Test12/26/2017
Cells communicate with each other through a number of different mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are well-known: in animals, for example, predatory threats can drive the release of norepinephrine, a hormone that travels through the bloodstream and triggers heart and muscle cells to initiate a "fight-or-flight" response.
-
Developing The First Pediatric Heart Valve Designed To “Grow” With The Child12/20/2017
Each year 40,000 babies in the U.S. are born with a congenital heart defect, often caused by a defective heart valve, which is estimated to account for 8,000 to 13,000 new cases in the U.S. alone.
-
Mass Spectrometric Imaging Technique Makes Diagnosis Easier And Smarter12/17/2017
A team of researchers at DGIST has recently developed a technology which enables to acquire a high resolution mass spectrometry imaging in micrometer size of live biological samples without chemical pretreatment in the general atmospheric pressure environment.