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Development of software for safety critical medical devices - an interview-based survey of state of practice

Lindholm, Christin LU and Höst, Martin LU (2008) Software Engineering Research and Practise in Sweden (SERPS)
Abstract
To be able to survive in the long run the medical device industry of today needs effective development processes and ways to secure quality. These development processes and quality assurance processes must follow the different laws and regulations over the world depending on what market the organisations are established on. Organisations have been developing medical devices and systems over many years but now this type of

products contain more and more software. The development of software is often appended in to the existing development and quality assurance processes and these processes may not be the most efficient and correct processes when it comes to software. This paper presents the results from an interview study with the... (More)
To be able to survive in the long run the medical device industry of today needs effective development processes and ways to secure quality. These development processes and quality assurance processes must follow the different laws and regulations over the world depending on what market the organisations are established on. Organisations have been developing medical devices and systems over many years but now this type of

products contain more and more software. The development of software is often appended in to the existing development and quality assurance processes and these processes may not be the most efficient and correct processes when it comes to software. This paper presents the results from an interview study with the purpose to survey how the medical device companies work today, what development processes and quality assurance techniques they use and how laws and regulations affect their way of working. Safety is very essential for the medical device organisations and all the interviewed organisations consider the software in their medical device as safety critical. Risk and risk analysis is an important part of the safety thinking and is frequently performed by the organisations. However established and systematic techniques to analyse risks of the medical devices

are not so frequently used as expected. The intension is that the results from the study could be used as a

help to find more adapted processes and techniques for software development in the medical device domain. The results have also been used to derive a set of requirements on new techniques and methods in the area. The derived requirements can serve as guidance to researchers aiming at improving processes, methods and techniques in the medical device domain. (Less)
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author
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organization
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type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
conference name
Software Engineering Research and Practise in Sweden (SERPS)
conference location
Karlskrona, Sweden
conference dates
0001-01-02
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
5c2b3dbd-1e00-4403-8898-4a3ee30ed55a (old id 1277180)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 14:06:49
date last changed
2021-05-06 15:23:10
@misc{5c2b3dbd-1e00-4403-8898-4a3ee30ed55a,
  abstract     = {{To be able to survive in the long run the medical device industry of today needs effective development processes and ways to secure quality. These development processes and quality assurance processes must follow the different laws and regulations over the world depending on what market the organisations are established on. Organisations have been developing medical devices and systems over many years but now this type of <br/><br>
products contain more and more software. The development of software is often appended in to the existing development and quality assurance processes and these processes may not be the most efficient and correct processes when it comes to software. This paper presents the results from an interview study with the purpose to survey how the medical device companies work today, what development processes and quality assurance techniques they use and how laws and regulations affect their way of working. Safety is very essential for the medical device organisations and all the interviewed organisations consider the software in their medical device as safety critical. Risk and risk analysis is an important part of the safety thinking and is frequently performed by the organisations. However established and systematic techniques to analyse risks of the medical devices <br/><br>
are not so frequently used as expected. The intension is that the results from the study could be used as a <br/><br>
help to find more adapted processes and techniques for software development in the medical device domain. The results have also been used to derive a set of requirements on new techniques and methods in the area. The derived requirements can serve as guidance to researchers aiming at improving processes, methods and techniques in the medical device domain.}},
  author       = {{Lindholm, Christin and Höst, Martin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{Development of software for safety critical medical devices - an interview-based survey of state of practice}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6283615/4648268.pdf}},
  year         = {{2008}},
}