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Medical Device Digital Thread

Medical Device Design Control

Tackle the complexity of medical device design control and effectively manage safety, compliance and monitoring throughout the lifecycle by enabling comprehensive digital traceability and interconnected data analysis.

Accelerate your design control process today

Ensuring safety, compliance and monitoring in medical device design control is crucial for risk mitigation and efficacy. To overcome complexities in data and personnel, manufacturers must prioritize safety and efficacy through digital traceability, compliance via efficient design file management and continuous monitoring with interconnected data analysis.

Improve design speed and efficiency with design control

Deploy an integrated approach for enhanced design control and risk management to ensure your device design is safe and effective for patients and users, compliant with standards and continuously monitored throughout the lifecycle.

40%

Faster time-to-market

Save time creating compliant documentation for audits using an application lifecycle management (ALM) platform. (iThera Medical)

1

Unifed solution for all product development phases

Utilize a fully unified end-to-end solution covering all major phases from requirements to testing. (Dentsply Sirona)

80%

Lower compliance documentation time

Reduce compliance documentation time by 80% with Polarion. (Sonova)

Design Control Solutions

Enhance design management by using design controls

Navigate the complexities of design control for medical device development and manufacturing with a proven digital partner. Optimize processes, become data-driven and increase engineering efficiency and speed across the device lifecycle using our integrated design control solution.

Enable complete digital traceability, ensuring safety and effectiveness, by integrating design elements, adhering to regulatory compliance and automating data flow throughout the design process.

  • Deconstruct documentation into data elements
  • Automate trace matrixes to eliminate manual documentation relationships and leverage logical data flows
  • Implement comprehensive traceability

Design control solutions for medical devices

20%

Less time spent on documentation

Reduce the time required to create, review and assemble documentation for regulatory approval. (Sonova)

65%

Savings in hunting for data

Save time searching for data with an information management system for full traceability. (iThera Medical)

FDA

Improved compliance management

Achieve compliance regulations with the FDA or IEC 62304 using ALM software. (Dentsply Sirona)

Case study

iThera Medical

Case Study

Boosting engineering information management efficiency reduces time spent hunting for data by over 65 percent

Company:iThera Medical

Industry:Medical devices & pharmaceuticals

Location:Munich, Germany

Siemens Software:Polarion

Polarion ALM provides us with a solid foundation or efficient engineering information management. We reduced the time spent searching for data by more than 65 percent.
Ingmar Thiemann, VP, Quality Management and Regulatory Affairs, iThera Medical
Enhance design control

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Make the design control process more effective to master safety, compliance and monitoring of device design.

A group of engineers wearing lab coats looking at a computer screen.

Optimize device lifecycle with design control solutions

Product lifecycle management

Requirements and verification management

Application lifecycle management

Systems engineering

Frequently asked questions

Design control refers to the process of ensuring safety, compliance and continuous monitoring throughout the product lifecycle, involving comprehensive digital traceability, efficient design file management and interconnected data for parallel documentation analysis.

Establishing design controls can improve the design process by implementing comprehensive digital traceability, efficient design file management and interconnected data for parallel documentation analysis. This helps detect errors early, coordinate employees, provide a baseline for periodic review, increase engineering efficiency, prevent costly errors and recalls and enhance quality and features.

A quality system is a comprehensive framework that encompasses the entire lifecycle of a medical device, including the development and approval of design inputs, the design of the device and associated manufacturing processes, ongoing changes to the design or manufacturing process and revisiting the design control process multiple times throughout the product's lifecycle.

A Design History File (DHF) is a collection of complete and up-to-date information about a medical device's design process. It includes documentation of design inputs, development activities, testing results, design changes and any other relevant information necessary to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements.

To improve medical device compliance, it's essential to implement effective design file management, ensure complete DHF information, use template-driven regulatory records, reinforce collaboration between R&D and production teams and utilize process compliance tools for quick creation and monitoring of DHF, DMR and technical files synchronized with regulatory interactions.

Because there is a large amount of people and information involved in the development phases of medical devices, it is often challenging to implement, monitor and improve them. Deploying an integrated approach for enhanced design control and risk management ensures that device design is safe and effective for patients and users, compliant with standards and continuously monitored throughout the lifecycle. Siemens Design Control for Medical Devices tools enables manufacturers to support traceability and connections, interconnect data and implement efective design file management.​

Learn more

Read

Infographic | Improve the safety and effectiveness of medical devices with Design Control

White paper | Manage complex design control framework with PLM

Ebook | Improve the design control process with SaaS PLM

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