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Aligned Elements is a Medical Device application lifecycle management (ALM) solution enabling fast development and regulatory compliance through improved Design History File management.

November 26 2018
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Category: Tips & Tricks

Risk Assessments play a central role in Medical Device development. All medical device manufacturers apply risk management (they should because they have to!). All of them claim to be compliant with ISO 14971. And all of them do it differently.

I have worked with a large number of clients and I have seen more Risk Assessment variants than I can count. Some are good, some have, let's say, "potential".  

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From this experience, I can deduce a few best practices that will reduce the risk assessment effort considerably.

Here are my top five tips:

Don't brainstorm to identify risks

You are required to identify and assess ALL potential risks. How do you find them ALL? That can be a daunting question for someone new to the medical device industry.

However, the solution is to be structured i.e. to use a structured approach to systematically identify risks. There exists several known methods to do this, including:

  • Task Analysis (analysing the use process)
  • System Analysis (analysing the system through decomposition)
  • Using the ISO 14971 annex questions
  • Using existing risk reports of similar devices

Regardless of the approach selected, brainstorming should not be one of them. There are a number of well-known reasons for this, the most important one being that you will miss important risks.

Next time around, try a structured technique. You will identify more risks. I promise.

Use both top-down and bottom-up Risk Assessments

Some companies rely on EITHER bottom-up OR top-down risk assessment techniques and miss out on the fact that both approaches deliver vital and often DIFFERENT risks.

Top-down risk assessment techniques (such as PHA or Task Analysis) can be done early in the development process without much knowledge about the actual design of the device. It is a great tool for early identifying use errors and probably misuse.

Once the device design is known, the selected design itself must be analysed for risks (such as materials used, geometry, movements and energy emittance etc.) through a bottom-up risk assessment. FMEA's are very popular and well designed for this purpose. Both these techniques complement each other and should be conducted by any serious medical device manufacturer.

Don't keep Design Controls and Risk Management in separate systems

Design drives risk. And Risk drives design. This will become apparent when you need to follow up on the implementation and verification of mitigations as well as the further analysis if mitigations introduce new risks. The glue between the design and the risks is the traceability. The effort of managing this traceability in a paper-based documentation system will be VERY high (those of you who have done it will nod now!).

So is applying software tools the solution? Not necessarilly, since proper traceability monitoring can not be done until the requirement management tool is integrated with the risk management tool (or vice versa). Only by automatically managing the traceability between the Risk Assessment Items and the Design Items, preferably in a single tool, can true trace monitoring be obtained.

Use reasonable probability and severity scales

I am glad to see a clear trend of tightening down the probability and severity scales during the risk evaluations. From previously having used up to 10 steps, the current trend tends towards five to six steps or less. People simply have a very hard time to judge whether a probability should be six or seven on a 1-10 scale and spend too much time pondering such questions. The option range is simply too large to be effective!

For the probability axis, I would like to endorse Dr. Johner approach of having each step representing 2 orders of magnitude. He explains this very well by saying, that apart from such a an approach lets the probability axis span over more than 8 order of magnitudes, "...the factor 100 indicates the precision which we can appreciate... If you ask a group of people, how long it takes (on average) for a hard disk to be defective, the estimates vary between 2 years and 10 years. But everyone realizes that this average is greater than one month and less than 10 years. And between these two values is about a factor of 100."

Make use of existing mitigations

In many cases, the risk assessment is carried out when the design is already known. In such cases: when coming up with mitigations for your identified risks, use the already existing mitigations in your current design!

I bet your current design already contains a whole bunch of design decisions that are risk mitigations without you really considering them as such. The absolute majority of design teams I have encountered are very, very good in designing innovative and safe devices. However, many of the design decisions taken are based on previous experience, industry state-of-the-art, or simply old habits having been refined over time. Since these engineer are often better designers than document writers, they simply do not see their design (often already in place) through the lens of risk management.

Bottom line: your current design already contains of an uncovered treasure of existing mitigations. Try to use your existing design as mitigations when performing your next risk assessment.

Aligned Elements, our medical device ALM, assists you in performing structured risk assessments. Its highly customizable risk assessment configuration can be set up for a large array of risk analysis variants. Should you be interested in a demonstration, contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

November 05 2018
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Category: Tips & Tricks

 

In the beginning, there was the User Need.

According to FDA, the User Needs is the starting point for building a safe and efficient medical device. However, User Needs can be elusive to an engineering team used to rigid techniques and accustomed to having "full information" when approaching a problem.

bikeIt is rather rare that the developer has the real and deep experience a User has and it can therefore be precarious to leave the User Need elicitation process in the hands of an engineering team. Here are some tips for eliciting better User Needs.

Consider the Intended Use

It has been said 100 times before, but I say it again: start out by considering the Intended Use and Indication for Use.

These two items will tell you:

  • who is the device for (or rather, who do you say the device is for)
  • why (or for what) is the user using this device (or rather, for what you say the device is to be used for)

The whole idea here is to get as close as possible to the user and the situation in which the user applies the device. What medical condition is the device intended to address? Where and under which circumstances is device used? In a hospital or an ambulance? During the night? In the rain? By a child? By a blind person?

Answering these questions will put you in the shoes of the user and will let you describe the user's needs in his or her own words. Imagining being the user in the situation where the need for using the device arise will also give you an idea of the constraints facing the user at the time of application.

Thus, considering the "who" and the "why" is generally a more fruitful starting point than elaborating on the "how" (which is what engineers tend to do).

Who is the user?

In a majority of cases, a medical device is handled by more than one type of User during the products lify cycle. This becomes clear when considering non-core usage tasks such as:

  • transportation
  • installation
  • calibration
  • maintenance
  • service
  • decommissioning

How did the device arrive at the usage location? How and by whom was it deployed? Was it carried in a pocket? Was it transported by air? 

Apparently, it is important to consider all people involved with the handling of the device since these actions may have safety implications. Again, do not second guess the needs of these users but involve them in the process.

User Needs can be vague

Using fuzzy language (such as adverbs) when documenting requirements is a known bad-practice. However, User Needs may be written in a less prescriptive way if it capture important aspects of the User and the Usage. We know that, in the end, the Medical Device will end up being very concrete and void of any fuzziness.

The challenge thus lies in translating the potentially fuzzy language used in User Needs into concrete specifications in the Design Input Requirements and concrete Validation Tests. Make sure that the User Needs are well understood by the team deriving the Design Input Requirements and Validation Tests from the User Needs.

Not all input is User Needs

Costs, brand colors, production constraints are examples of important design input that are not necessarilly User Needs. I usually recommend my clients to add an additional Design Control type for Stakeholder Needs in order to pick up this input which definitely influences the design, although not always being required to be verified or validated.

When setting up the validation activities, you must be explicit about what you intend to validate and explicitly define the criteria applied to make this selection. By separating the input in the two mentioned Design Control Types makes it easy to explain which Design Controls are intended for validation (User Needs) and which are not (Stakeholder Needs).

Write User Needs with Validation in mind

The way User Needs are written will heavily influence the Validation activities. Since Validation is a resource intensive (and therefore expensive) activity, it makes sense to keep a close eye on the prognosed validation work that will be derived by a User Need when writing it.

If some of the validation activities are already known at an early stage, the team can use this knowledge to cleverly formulate the User Needs in a way to maximize the coverage of the known validation activities. By this, I do not mean that important User Needs should be left out but rather that formulating and structuring the combined User Needs can have a positive or negative impact on  the validation effort.

By following these simple guidelines, you should be able to get more bang for the buck next time you elicitate User Needs.

Aligned Elements, the medical device ALM, manages end-to-end traceability of all Design Control items, including User Needs, Design Input Requirements, Validation and Verification Testing. If you are interested in an online demonstration of Aligned Elements, let us know on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

September 28 2018
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Category: Tips & Tricks

Risk Management is a crucial part of Medical Device Development and if you are about to develop a Medical Device, you and your team are likely to find yourselves spending many hours compiling Risk Assessments.

There exist several techniques for performing a proper Risk Assessment but they all follow the same basic steps:

  • Define your risk policy (risk acceptance criteria)
  • Identify the Hazards through a structured analysis
  • Evaluate the Risks by estimating severities and probability
  • Mitigate the Risks that are not acceptable
  • Implement and verify the mitigations for effectiveness

To get you started, we have made two free Risk Assessment Excel templates available for download.

Download Free Risk Assessment Templates

The first demonstrates a Failuremode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) approach, a widespread technique used in many areas and industries. We often see it in bottom-up types of Risk Assessment.

The second one uses a Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) approach which is an excellent top-down approach earlier in the design cycle where many of the design details are not yet known.

Both these techniques are available in Aligned Elements and we have compared and contrasted them in earlier posts.

August 27 2018
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Category: Tips & Tricks

Requirements Management is strange. It is a well-researched area which each year yields an impressive number of articles, conferences and known best-practices. Still, this body of knowledge remains remarkably underused by the people who would gain from it most. In many of the organisations I encounter, well-established requirements elicitation techniques are simply not undertaken.

Perhaps this has to do with the deceivingly simple task at hand. "I just need to write down what the device should be able to do. How hard can it be?". Hard enough it seems, if one considers the many reports stating how mismanaged requirements leads to enormous costs down the line.

This is exactly what Prof. Dr. Samuel Fricker and his team has established in their paper "Requirements Engineering: Best Practices" (2015).

He concludes that although each and every one of the 419 participating organisations "...elicited, planned, analysed, specified, checked, and managed requirements...", very few of them apply formal requirement elicitation techniques.

For those who did "...only three techniques correlated with requirements engineering success: scenarios of system use, business cases, and stakeholder workshops."

The common idea with these techniques is to:

  1. bring structure into elicitation process
  2. involve many people into the discussion

Both parts are essential to success. Doing 1) without 2) misses out on critical knowledge in the organisation. Doing 2) without 1) is just wasteful. Personally, I have particularly good results from applying a variant of Use Scenarios called "Task Analysis / Task Risk Management" described by Andy Brisk. In short, this is a basic Task Analysis method, where processes are analysed step by step for requirements and risks.

Opposing the natural inclination of engineers to decompose a system into parts for analysis, this method focus on how you use the device, i.e. the system is decomposed into the scenarios where the user interact with the system.

In other words, we let use drive design.

Mr. Brisk lists a number of process examples which coincides well those applied to a generic medical device, such as:

  • Unpacking
  • Setup / Installation
  • Calibration
  • Start up
  • Daily Operation
  • Shutdown
  • Maintenance
  • Service
  • Alarms and Alerts
  • Decommission

If the found processes are too large to analyse, Mr. Brisk advices to decompose them further into manageable sizes.

Once the processes are identified, Mr. Brisk prioritizes the processes according to risk, in terms of:

  • Are there significant damaging consequences if the task is performed incorrectly? (High Severity of potential Harms)
  • Is there a reasonable likelihood that tasks will be performed incorrectly? (High Probability of Use Errors)

The idea of this risk-based prioritization is to focus on high-risk processes and analyse them early and thoroughly.

The processes are now analysed step-by-step, preferably by a group of people. They imagine and discuss the steps an imaginary user goes through to perform a task. How is the system accessed? How does the user communicate his intentions to the system and vice versa? What potential errors might the users make?

Task Analysis

Coloured post-it notes can be used to describe the steps on a wall. A tip is to use different colours for process steps and identified potential use errors. This approach manages to create both a common vocabulary of describing the system and its use, as well as creating a common understanding of how the device is meant to be used. It also tends to highlight areas where people had a different understanding of how the system should be used (by simply measuring the loudness of the discussion).

The Task Analysis described above is an easy and straight-forward way of eliciting requirements AND uncover high-level risks in a usage context. What makes it particularly suitable for Medical Device manufacturers is that it combines risk- and requirement elicitation in a single, common activity. Much too often, these two tasks are performed by separate groups in separate contexts.

A further bonus is that it intrinsically produces both Use Scenarios and Use Errors, which are substantial an essential parts of the Usability Management File.

Some important lessons learnt using this method includes:

  • Try to use a similar step granularity in all processes
  • Before starting, try to agree on what shall be considered "known" about the system
  • Define a clear Goal as well as Start and End point for each process in order to declare the scope
  • Be generous with risks, rather too many than too few
  • Do not forget to write down the elicitated Scenarios and Risks before you leave the room

Aligned Elements supports the documentation of Use Scenarios and their associated Use Errors as described above in our IEC 62366 Configuration. The Use Errors are applied in the overall High-Level Risk Assessment to drive further design decisions.

July 15 2018
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Category: Tips & Tricks

That medical device development entails a lot of documentation should not be a surprise to anyone. Hundreds of documents are created, reviewed, released, then modified, reviewed and released again. The majority of these documents needs to be signed, often by two persons or more. Collecting signatures, although it seems like a trivial task, becomes a significant nuisance when the number of documents and releases increase.

One of our customers insisted on having 3 people sign each test case before release. Their 18 000 test cases yielded a combined signature collection effort of 5 man-years (estimated 30 mins to collect a single signature, their estimation).

It is rare to find medical device manufacturers that enjoy writing medical device development documents, but it is even rarer to find those who gladly spend their days collecting signatures for the said documents.

The obvious question is hence: how can we spend less time on document signatures?

For many medical device manufacturers, the equally obvious answer seems to be electronic (or digital) signatures.

So why is it so hard to get a signature?

There are several potential reasons for this. Maybe the Signer is a very busy person and simply has no time for this task. Maybe the Signer is located somewhere else through work, travelling, vacation or other reasons. Or perhaps the previous Signer did not pass on the document to the next Signer in line. Or maybe a formal signature sequence (order) is forced by the document process in question, where a Signer that actually is available, is prevented to carry out the task since some Signer further up the signing sequence has not fulfilled hers. Or it might be that the document in question cannot be signed before some other related document has been released (i.e. signed).

Thus, there can be formal reasons but also trivial reasons why a signature does not get timely collected.

The most trivial is of course that it is just hard to physically get the document in front of the Signer (or the other way around) for some reason or another. Once you get that far, the literary "stroke of the pen" is usually a quick affair. This is the perceived major efficiency benefit of Electronic Signatures. You do not have to physically get the document in front of the Signer. The document does not need to get passed around. The Signer can pull it up (from an E-Signing System) whenever he wants, from wherever he is. This allows a quasi-parallel execution of signatures. Two people on different sides of the planet can sign the same document at the same time (almost)! Costs associated with printing, sending, scanning and storing the paper copy are eliminated. E-Signatures also entail increased measures of security, enhanced authenticity, resisting tampering and also provide accurate signature audit trails.

Before explaining how to introduce an E-Signing System, let me say a few words about Digital and Electronic Signatures.

Digital and Electronic Signatures

Even though the terms are often used interchangeably, there are some notable differences between the two concepts.

According to FDA, Electronic Signatures are "Compilation of data (user name / password, dongles, biometric)", which is unique for a person. This can be used to sign documents and is as legally binding as a “wet signature”. The signature and the association with the signed entity (document) is stored in a database of the Signature System. Furthermore, not all E-Signing Systems leave a visual mark on the signed document that indicates that it has actually been signed.

Digital Signatures on the other hand, require a Digital Certificate that ensures the identity of the signer. A part of that Digital Certificate gets embedded in the signed document during the signing process. As a result, the validity of the signature can be checked independently of the E-Signing System.

So, someone needs to guarantee the identity of the signer.

For Electronic Signatures, the organisation (the manufacturer) does this by using the validates E-Signing System.

For Digital Signatures, it is the issuer of the Digital Certificate that ensures the identity of the signer. Digitally signed documents often also contain a visible signature.

Obviously, there seem to be several advantages using Digital Signatures. The validity of the signed document can be inspected independently of the E-Signing System, which is an advantage if the E-Signing System goes down, is corrupted or the system vendor goes bankrupt.

Any drawbacks?

Yes, a few. Obtaining a Digital Certificate from a third-party vendor is expensive and requires an administrative effort. There is the obvious question of where and how to store these certificates as well as associate them with the user. They also have the nuisance to expire after a while and therefore need to get regularly renewed. People also have a tendency to marry and change their names etc. which also leads to renewals. Furthermore, it is not guaranteed that the validity shows up correctly in third party viewers (like Acrobat PDF Reader), for technical reasons having to do with root certificates.

An organisation can circumvent all this by issuing their own Digital Certificates. This is somewhat of an IT "adventure" but it can be done. Costs can then be lowered somewhat but there is still a significant administrative effort. Moreover, internally generated Digital Certificates can of course not be validated by third party viewers (like Acrobat PDF Reader).

So, there are pros and cons with both options.

However, they have several similarities and most important of all, both methods are recognized by the FDA.

Let's do E-SIgning!

Let's say we want to engage in eSigning (Electronic or Digital). What kind of effort can we expect to get this up and running?

Here is a short list of some of the steps:

  • Assess the E-Signing System for Part 11 / Annex 11 compliance
  • Qualify the E-Signing System Vendor as Supplier according to your QMS
  • Assign responsible roles and people for the E-Signing System
  • Install and configure the E-Signing System
  • Make or buy the Digital Certificates (if used)
  • Adapt your QMS to recognize E-Signatures and describe how they are intended to work
  • Prepare all the Document Templates to be used for eSigning (the system needs to know where in the document the signature shall be placed. Page nr, location on page, margins and spaces etc).
  • Validate the E-Signing System
  • Create E-Signature User Guidelines and train all users in how to use it
  • Notify the FDA (which is compulsory)

There is thus a non-neglectable initial effort to set up the E-Signing System, and also an effort to keep it maintained, both from a process as well as from an IT perspective.

There are also several other things to consider before you decide to go down the Electronic Signature path:

Document Life Cycle

All documents have a life cycle and the signing is only a very small part of this process. You need to consider how the document gets into the E-Signing System, how it interfaces with other systems such as Document Management Systems, workflow engines or e-Forms of which the document may be a part.

You also need to pay attention on how you plan to archive the electronic documents. This might seem like a trivial question but it is more depth here than you think.

External Users

If external users (as in external to your organisation) are going to use the system, you need to prepare a process where they get access to the E-Signing System, including setting up a corresponding user in the system with the appropriate Digital Certificate if applicable. These external users also need to get trained in how to use the system.

Hybrid Signature Situations

Are you going to end up with documents that are partly signed electronically and partly with traditional "wet signatures"? If so, you need a described process for this as well.

Ownership

Last but not least you need to establish who has the ownership of the E-Signing System. Is it the IT Department that usually acquire and maintain IT systems? Or is it the R&D department that probably is the most frequent user of the system? Or is it the HR department that is concerned with the identity of the people working in the organisation? This needs to be clarified before you start.

Predicted Outcome

As mentioned, an E-Signing System will decrease the effort of placing the document in front of the Signer. It will reduce costs associated with transporting the paper copy of the document. It will also potentially increase security and authenticity of the documents.

But there are things an E-Signing System cannot do. Regardless of how deep you entrench E-Signatures as a paradigm in your organisation, you will almost inevitable have a residual number of documents that are signed with ink. Thus, no matter how much you push E-Signatures you will end up with a hybrid system, composed by documents signed electronically and documents signed with ink. Be prepared for this.

Then, a Signature System is per se an IT system with all the work it entails. It needs to be validated and maintained, people will repeatedly forget their credentials if they do not use the system frequently and there will be the ubiquitous bugs and errors. This all means increased costs that need to be compared and contrasted with the costs by using a manual system.

Finally, an E-Signature System does not make bad processes good just by digitizing them. Overloaded employees will still remain overloaded regardless.

For which situations does E-Signatures make sense?

E-Signatures make sense when signing is a routine operation i.e. when a user makes several signings per week. E-signing for the occasional (or maybe even singular) CEO signature on a Product Requirements Document does not warrant the effort.  

Document types that are well suited for E-Signatures are those that exist in many instances and that are comparably small amount of actual content (as in quick to read). Examples of such document types are time reports, expense reports, purchasing approvals and test case documents.

Last but not least, maintenance is of course made easier if all Signers are part of the organisation (as opposed to involving multiple external users).

Efficient with and without E-signatures

If you find it cumbersome to collect signatures today, there are several ways you can scrutinize your organisation for efficiency improvements.

Analyse current signing process

Are all these signatures really necessary? Ask yourself why they were added ("It is required by our process" is not a valid answer) and most importantly, what does the particular signature mean? In what way does a particular signature make the document "better"?

Don’t get dependent on busy Signers

The overloaded Project Manager or CTO that never has time for signing is a common bottleneck in many organisations. Appoint deputies to all signing functions (the deputies shall also have deputies). Try to avoid sequentially forced signature sequences. They cost more than they bring. Finally, simply planning the signing occasion like a regular meeting (set up a meeting in the calendar) might yield you some good results.

I hope this post has highlighted some of the pros and cons of employing Electronic Signatures. If there is anything I want you to take home it is probably this:

  • Signature efficiency stands and falls with the process, not the system
  • Analyse and improve the process first!!
  • E-signatures can be very beneficial in specific situations
  • E-signatures gains (i.e. speed gains) must be weighed against costs

Aligned Elements supports electronic as well as digital signatures of documents with automatic relaying to external Document Management Systems.

If you would like to get a demonstration of e-Signatures in Aligned Elements, just let us know.

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