Notified Bodies Association TEAM-NB input to EP Rapporteur in red answers to rapporteurs’ questions The European Association of Medical device Notified

Notified Bodies AssociationTEAM-NB input to EP Rapporteur

in red answers to rapporteurs’ questions

• The European Association of Medical device Notified Bodies

– Gert Bos – President– Francoise Schlemmer – Managing Director– Corinne Delorme – Secretary– .......

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Aims:

• Communication with– European Commission– Competent Authorities– Industry

• Promote technical and ethical standards• Participate in improving the legal framework• Contribute to harmonization• Represent Notified Bodies

Team-NB Presentation to EP rapporteur

TEAM-NB

• Mandatory to sign for 30 TEAM-NB members

• Available on website• Changes and additions:

– Extension to IVD– Unannounced visits– Product Verification– Supervisory Structure– Peer assessment

• Signatories in transition period to come in compliance

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Code of Conduct V3


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TEAM-NB members work outside EU


US 510K US - A Canada Australia Japan Taiwan Hongkong South Korea Saudi Arabia

product QMS QMS both both QMS product product product

AMTAC UK in progress x x

BSI UK x x x x x x x x

DEKRA NL x in progress x x x

DGM DK x x x

DQS DE in progress x

Intertek UK x in progress x

ITC CZ x

LGA DE x x

LNE-Gmed FR x x x x

LRQA UK in progress x

MDC DE s s x

MEDCERT DE x

NSAI IR x

SGS UK x x x x x x x

TUV Rh DE x x x x x x x x

TUV Sud DE x x x x x x x x x

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What makes a good Notified Body ?

• Ideal NB operation for class III/AIMD/implants– Selected notified bodies demonstrate that sufficient expertise can be

available in a notified body

– Experienced medical device design engineers from industry, hired and trained in the NB as own staff, who are the main reviewers, limited additional external resource allowed (Code of Conduct defines qualification criteria)

– Mandatory (mainly external) clinical experts involved in all class III/AIMD/implant devices

– Transparent database of all class III/AIMD/implant devices, NB needs to submit upon start of the review

– Centralized EU oversight body, who sample reviews based on certain criteria before CE certification and assess the review process and competence used. NB’s to make available upon request some of their expert review resources to supplement the competence in the centralized oversight body.


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What makes a good class III review?

• Concerted review by series of qualified experts– Qualifications based on product categorization as defined by NBOG

– Qualifications are based on technical or scientific specialisms such as sterilization, biocompatibility, animal tissue, software, functional safety, clinical evaluation, electrical safety, packaging, stability, in-vitro mechanical, chemical or physical verification testing and for IVD the specific technology such as NAT or ELISA.

– BSc degree or equivalent in the relevant product or medical area for which the Product Specialist wishes to be qualified...

– 4 Years working experience with practical experience in the medical sector.

– Mainly in house staff

– Use of external clinicians with relevant expertise to assess the product


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What makes a good clinical reviewer?

• List of criteria for clinicians reviewing dossiers defined:– At least four years of practice in clinical field relevant to device under review

– Actively practicing surgery in field of application for minimum 1 day a week, until maximally 4 years ago

– Practicing in IMDRF countries, or having practiced there for a minimum of 4 years

– Demonstrated knowledge on reviewing, designing or conducting clinical trials

– Declaration listing what the clinician reviewed before (review CV tracking)

• For external experts: Agreements on responsibilities and authorities with notified body, including a full CV

• Qualification & scope of review restricted to demonstrated expertise

• For external experts: Declaration of independence / statement on not having conflict of interest signed for each review


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What makes supervision good?• Qualified supervisors (scrutiny):

– National authority personnel responsible for auditing work of Notified Body personnel responsible for carrying out product related review shall have proven qualifications equivalent to those Notified Body personnel

– Similar requirement for national authority personnel responsible for auditing work of Notified Body personnel responsible for carrying out audits

• A central organisation to do unannounced reviews of selected high risk design dossiers after CE marking

• Performing comparative reviews of CE marked products in the same category– maintain early availability benefits for patients

– introduce the needed openness and rigour into the system

– Coordinated with other stakeholders input, such focus would result in detailed product safety guidance and standards being written

– Use of expert panels (Vascular panel, Orthopedic panel etc), including Notified Body experts


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What is needed for transparency?

• Remove the ‘in-house exemption’– on health institutions to be removed so these products become part of

the vigilance reporting scheme which should help identify bad designs

• Improve change reporting:– Re-order and reword Section 5.5: The applicant shall inform the

Notified Body which issued the EU design-examination certificate of any planned changes to the approved product, with a supporting case justifying whether or not the change is significant.

• Build extensive EU database, but more importantly analyse the data it contains and publish such analysis

• Stakeholder reports publicly available:– Safety assessment reports on products, market surveillance reports

from Authorities, Overview report Commission


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What is learned from MoM and Changi hips?

• Metal-on-Metal hip implants– showed not to be up to demanded performance years after being introduced

into the market

– As the problem became visible only after years of implantation, in relatively low frequency, no regulatory system in the world picked it up pre-market

– showcases that effective market surveillance captures such long term safety concerns

– Good cooperation between manufacturers, Competent Authorities and Notified Bodies to investigate the cases – system working at its best....

– If all stakeholders would coordinate their focus on long term implants, we might be able to identify such concerns earlier

• more coordinated registries

• further defined minimum end-points in PMS data collection

• Active analysis of joint knowledge


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What is learned from MoM and Changi hips?

• Changi hip – BMJ discoveries– Investigation revealed weaknesses in the system and brought to light

several unacceptable practices, helping to focus on improvements needed

– Not a very balanced investigation, singling out a select group of target notified bodies and dropped them individually in case the notified body did not buy the story or suggested to call in their technical experts into the discussion.

– Identifying some weak notified bodies, rather than being reflective on the performance, integrity and quality of all notified bodies....


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Vision on Revision

• Reprocessing

– Same rigor to apply to ‘in house’ reprocessing of single use devices

– Disagree with unilateral options per country – distortion of single market

– List of reprocessable single-use devices will secure high level patient safety

A list of single-use devices for critical use which can be reprocessed, decided by the Commission with oversight from Member States, will secure a high level of patient safety. An expert scientific committee, such as the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, should advise the Commission on this issue, and support regular review of the list over time to keep it state of art.


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Vision on Revision

• Notified Body Designation, numbers and legal form

– Decisions to be made by audit team, not designating authority

– Commission to rotate peer reviews

– National authority staff doing audits need qualification equivalent to NB staff

– Number or legal form unimportant

– Important are competence, independence and proper supervision

– Utilizing proposed strict criteria will likely result in a serious reduction of notified bodies or substantial improvement of their quality

=> raising the bar to a very high level


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Vision on Revision

• Classification

– Novelty will be impossible to define

• Risk

– Nothing in life is without risk – amendments needed

• The unborn child

– Suggestion to add protection to embryos

• Clinical Investigation

– Clearer indications from Competent Authorities what they approve when they approve

– Detail what constitutes interventional study – diverging views


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Vision on Revision

• Clinical Investigation

– Clearer indications from Competent Authorities what they approve when they approve

– Detail what constitutes interventional study – diverging views

• Vigilance and market surveillance

– Deadline on reporting FSCAs

• Cooperation

– Engage notified body experience

– Clear separation on responsibilities, but also responsibilities of coordination and exchange of views


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Contacts

TEAM-NB:

• Gert Bos ([email protected]) President• Hans Heiner Junker (TUV Sud) Vice president• Guy Buijzen (DEKRA) Assistant vice-president• Aud Løken Eiklidh (PreSafe) Treasurer• Corinne Delorme (LNE/Gmed) Secretary• Françoise Schlemmer Director and Secretariat

www.team-nb.org


Documents

Notified Bodies Association TEAM-NB input to EP Rapporteur in red answers to rapporteurs’ questions The European Association of Medical device Notified