The Medical Device Industry: Developments in Software Risk Management

The Medical Device industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Device manufacturers are producing increasingly sophisticated and complex medical device software to differentiate themselves in the battle for dominance in this sector. The increase in the complexity of medical device software has introduced new challenges with respect to making medical devices and their associated software safe. Risk management has emerged as key in addressing these challenges. Existing literature on risk management for medical devices has been slow to adequately account for the complex nature of software in modern medical devices. Conversely, excellent progress has been made in the broader Software Engineering community with the production of holistic software risk based models such as the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®) and SPICE™. However, these models do not account for medical device specific requirements. This book examines the possibility of a unified approach whilst investigating the relevance of the CMMI® SPI model to the medical device regulatory requirements.

Dr. John Burton is the Chief Technical Officer for Vitalograph, a world leading provider of respiratory diagnostic devices, clinical trials and medical equipment. He graduated with a BSc. First class honors in Computer Science and Information Systems from the University of Limerick in 1997, where he subsequently obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2008. He has over 11 years experience in Software Process, Architecture, Design, Development and QA and has worked across a number of industries in the USA and Europe.