Aveek Pal Chaudhuri, Online Content Writer | Thursday, 13 April 2023
Medical devices are playing a key role in the healthcare ecosystem and provide innovative solutions for improvement of the patient health conditions. Companies are looking for innovation and through their impeccable solutions, patients receive updates to the existing technologies or the development of new devices which can offer effective treatment for a particular disease or condition.
Regulatory affairs are serving a critical function throughout a medical device product lifecycle and product development which is leading to a premarket strategy for drafting regulatory submissions and ensuring post-market are not there.
Product Design When product designs are completed and the company is starting to enter the market devices, the product development team relies on regulatory affairs for drafting the successful marketing submission. In different countries, the most common process of submission is a premarket notification which helps legislative authority for regulating medical devices. For completing a successful regulation, the regulatory affairs should be identifying a similar device that is already legally marketable and known as a predicate. Some submissions must denote that the new device should substantially be equivalent to the predicate one. No predicate is available, and the regulatory affairs must be submitting a premarket approval application or PMA for demonstrating the device. It should be safe and effective for its intended uses. Regulatory affairs are either responsible for reviewing the product lists and should be imprinting the products for claiming the consistent approved intended use. The marketing claims are the way to devise sales and the teams are differentiating the company’s product from the competitors. There are no claims that speak for the usage that has been not declared or approved by the FDA puts and the company is the risk of receiving a title letter for not branding. Medical device companies are relying on regulatory affairs and the teams around for ensuring all the materials associated with the device are working without hassles.
Product Development While product developers are working for bringing the concept into the livelihood of reality, the regulations for the professional world play a significant advisory helping the establishment for ensuring a product that can legally go into the consumer world and curate appreciation. It also comprises of the meetings for the regulations affairs, there must be advice from the product team on performing various decisions that might be affecting the type of regulatory submissions that are required. In the growth of the global medical devices market, there is projected growth of the industry from $495.46 billion in 2022 to $718.92 billion by 2029 at a CAGR of 5.5 percent in the forecast period. The products are distributed internationally and the regulatory affairs must also coordinate with the regional teams for ensuring the product has been to the global locations with the highest standards. For being an effective participant in the regulatory affair professional, there must be understandable international regulatory requirements that the devices will be subjected to, and it must be ensured that the product development team considers, and the international requirements to be testable and validates the device. This is why there is time consuming production in the medical device world as one gives more time one evolves with manufacturing brilliance.
Device Surveillance Medical device companies are relying on regulatory affairs and the teams that are after a device for clearing the pending approvals. In the post-market setups, the regulatory function is involved in device surveillance for ensuring that there are adverse events or non-functioning devices. Post-market surveillance reports are enabling companies to identify trends that are complaining about data as a warning system when the device has an unintended effect. For example, if a company is receiving an adverse event reporting an implanted device, it can cause unexpected pain weeks after the surgery. It is possible that the issue with the device is causing the problem and the regulatory post-market surveillance reports and works with the process for initiating the voluntary recalls in the situations for prevention of unintended harm for patients. When there are interactions with government bodies, there are key setups in the countries that must follow the regulatory affairs and should be working with international healthcare authorities and regulations in each of the countries for deciding the market and the working devices. In some of the countries which are less mature medical device regulations, there is marketing clearance or approval by the governing workers which can be relied on for obtaining without problems. Most countries in the world are having their medical device regulations and it is regulation affairs that require the understanding of the differences in the global regulatory requisites for ensuring the newest products could be marketable. There is a global regulatory landscape that is always changing and it is the teams that follow global trends and are following the new regulations and programs. In the following international harmonization, the organizations including the World Health Organization or International Medical Device Regulators Forums, can help in monitoring the global trends and understand the different health authorities that are dealing with the issues. In addition, the participating industry trade associations are allowing regulatory professionals to check with other teams that are working collectively for identifying the policy trends.