GMP News - Medical Devices

The new FDA guideline titled "Classification of Products as Drugs and Devices and Devices and Additional Product Classification Issues: Guidance for Industry" describes how the FDA classifies products as drugs, medical devices or other.

In a recent news you could read about a question-and-answer document from the EMA, describing certain issues concerning the handling of changes after approval ("variations"). This document has been updated again. The topic of changes to medical devices after the approval of "combination products" has now been added.

The ECA evaluates deficiencies regarding medical devices in FDA Warning Letters on a regular basis. Remarkable is the low number of Warning Letters to medical devices manufacturers in the first half of fiscal year 2017.

It its cGMP regulations for medical devices (21 CFR 820 (Quality System Regulations), the FDA also addresses the topic of validation (21 CFR 820.75). In the course of its inspections, the authority reviews the validation of the manufacturing processes. The FDA criticised according deficiencies at a Taiwanese medical devices manufacturer with a Warning Letter.

Since February, 16th 2017 you can comment on a concept paper of the EMA on the development of a guideline with regard to the quality requirements of "combination products" - called "Drug-Device-Combination" (DCC) in the document.

The IMDRF (International Medical Devices Regulator Forum) is the successor organisation of the Global Harmonisation Task Force (GHTF). Recently, the IMDRF has published a guidance draft entitled "Software as a medical Device (SAMD): Clinical Evaulation".

In irregular intervals, the ECA publishes overviews over new guidances or draft guidances, webinars, general strategy papers and inspection outcomes of the FDA with regard to medical devices. Find out more in the selection of FDA publications of the last months.