COMMISSION IMPLEMENTATION DECISION M/575 was issued 14 April 2021: This is a list of standards the EU Commission is hoping to Harmonize under MDR and IVDR.  One of the issues is the HAS consultant has issued a negative assessment on EN ISO 14971 which the CEN/CLC JTC3 leadership is working with the HAS consultant to address the issues and to draft acceptable European annexes so Harmonization can occur for the standard.  Many of the standards on the list in M/575 reference to EN ISO 14971 so it is highly likely that CEN and CENELEC will reject this newest version of the EU Commission Standardization Request again and we won’t have any Harmonized Standards by the Date of Application (26 May 2021) for the MDR which will cause lots of problems for manufacturers and Notified Bodies and cause more delays for the MDR & likely even for the IVDR I’m sorry to say.  Also, the MDCG 2021-5 “Guidance on standardisation for medical devices” doesn’t seem to clarify when harmonized standards are not published through the Offical Journal of the EU what to do.  In section 3.1 mentions Harmonized standards are voluntary with respect to the MDR & IVDR as they were for the MDD, AIMDD, & IVDD.  The closest the MDCG gets to it is to use the “State of Art” standards approach in section 3.5.

Another important observation is all the newest versions of the General & Collateral IEC 60601 Standards that were issued Summer of 2020 (EN versions were issued later in the year) are listed in Annex I of the EU Commission Standardization Request as the deadline to adopt these standards by 27 May 2024 — These are EN 60601-1, ed. 3.2; EN 60601-1-2, ed. 4.1; EN 60601-1-3, ed. 2.2; EN 60601-1-6, ed. 3.2; EN 60601-1-8, ed. 2.2; EN 60601-1-9, ed. 1.2; EN 60601-1-10, ed. 1.2; EN 60601-1-11, ed. 2.1; & EN 60601-1-12, ed. 1.1 – The Particular Standards EN 60601-2-XX or EN ISO 80601-2-XX listed are primarily based on the previous versions of the General & Collaterals of IEC 60601 standards on the M/575 list so this will likely cause conflicts vs the listed new standards mentioned here.

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Confused this is what Eisner Safety Consultants experts deal with all the time for countries for these and many other standards, regulations, laws, directives, and more. Leo Eisner is an expert on standards development and sit on many standards committees. Let us help you through this process. Need help with Essential Performance. Feel free to schedule a call with Leo www.EisnerSafety.com/Schedule-Call/ or contact Leo at Leo@EisnerSafety.com or through our contact form at https://eisnersafety.com/contact_eisner_safety/.

A good summary article on IEC e-Tech News about the IEC 60601 Series Amendments project that published last summer (2020) the General 60601-1, and Collateral standards (60601-1-XX). Please note that you need to read further comments in some of my articles about IEC 60601-1 for IEC 62368-1 and IEC 60601-1-2 for some additional details. One blog post is an article from InCompliance