We have decided to send out a monthly update of our blog posts for each month which are all located at www.EisnerSafety.com/Industry_News/.  We have been working out the bugs for the last few weeks and we are ready to go live as of today, 31 July 2012 evening (Some may receive your copy on 1 August).  If you haven’t viewed our blog posts in the last several months there have been some significant posts covering a lot of issues around national implementation of IEC 60601-1, 3rd edition (Japan, article on US, Canada, EU & Brazil) and Amendment 1 (just released); EU Competent Authorities formed Central Management Committee (CMC) for medical device sector & Issued Four Decisions; and much more.  You can also view our posts on Twitter at our Twitter feed at http://Twitter,com/EisnerSafety/.

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The European Competent Authorities have formed a Central Management Committee (CMC) to achieve greater consistency in the interpretation and implementation of the requirements related to the medical devices sector (MDD, AIMDD & IVDD).  The CMC has issued decisions that need to be considered and implemented by medical device manufacturers.You can find the decisions at http://www.cmc-md.eu/decisions.html.  Four decisions have been issued to date:

1.     Classification and Boderline Queries (23FEB2011) – States classification decisions along with rationales for:

– Wound irrigation solutions containing antimicrobial agents (Class III under rule 13)
– System to determine bacterial contamination in blood products (falls under the IVDD)
– Qualification of Gallipots as medical devices (not a medical device)

2.     Notified Body Best Practice Guides (23FEB2011) – This does NOT affect manufacturers.  It lists the Notified Body Operations Group (NBOG) Best Practice Guides (NBP) and states that all notified bodies are expected to follow these best practices.

3.     Address of the Manufacturer and EU Representative (issued 23Feb2011, updated 7JUN2011) – The ‘address of the manufacturer’ as required in the Essential Requirements on the labels and instruction for use, is the address of the registered place of business of the legally responsible manufacturer and shall include:

– street/road,
– number/house/floor,
– postal code
– city
– state/region and
– country

The same details have to be provided for the address of the authorized representative.
NOTE:  This is more extensive that what the FDA typically requires for an address.

4.     Readability of Instructions for Use (14MAR2012) – It must be assured, that patients and professionals may use the devices as intended by the manufacturer and any ambiguities with regard to the proper and safe use due to deficiencies in the readability of IFUs are avoided.  To that end:

a.     Appropriate checks should be performed by the manufacturer on suitable samples of target users whether IFUs are  really readable and assure proper and safe use of the device.  This includes consideration of font size, quality of translations, and understandability of texts and graphics.
b.     Post-market surveillance procedures have to be sensitive to any indications of bad readability via vigilance or other channels and to any necessary corrective measures.
c.     Special care has to be taken to enable users to properly identify changes to the previous version of the IFU on the basis of a risk assessment.

As dates/revisions are not posted with the document titles, it may be difficult to determine at-a-glance if the decisions have been updated.  Please take care when checking for updates that you inspect the document of interest.

Notified Bodies have been asked to audit these particular points.  You should anticipate that some or all of these issues will be reviewed during your next audit.

If you have any questions on this matter please feel free to contact us at Leo@EisnerSafety.com.