In the past 18 months, there have been breaches of security related to protected health information (PHI) at Broward Health, Florida Healthy Kids, and the Accellion FTA Hack. In turn, these breaches resulted in 11 more healthcare organizations getting exploited. ...
Compliance & Regulatory
3 Top Trends in Product Lifecycle Engineering Tools
Overview In 2015, SPK and Associates co-founder Chris McHale spoke with Peter Thorne, Director at Cambashi, a Cambridge, England-based independent industry analyst firm. With his over 30 years of experience as a software engineer user, vendor, and now analyst, Peter’s...
Podcast: Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles? Episode 5 – Systems Standards with Built-in Compliance
In episode five of our podcast series "Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles?", SPK's Director of Strategy, Rajiv Mistry, discusses systems standards and regulation challenges that could impede IoT's future growth and effectiveness. Think VCR v.s. Betamax or Blu-Ray v.s....
PLM in the Cloud: Computer System Validation in FDA Regulated Industries
Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems have evolved from being custom-built, on-premise applications to cloud-based, off-the-shelf solutions. As adoption for PLM in the cloud increases, system validation approaches in FDA/GXP regulated industries have had to...
Podcast: Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles? Episode 2 – Sensor Interfaces and Smart Devices
In the second episode of our podcast series "Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles?", we transition from a broad introduction of these five hurdles to a deeper dive into each challenge facing the Internet of Things. Let's begin with the smart device itself and it's digital...
How PLM Enables Innovation Without Risking Compliance
As technology has advanced, it's become more complex -- and with complexity comes the issue of tracking and monitoring the different processes and their corresponding data. In non-critical applications, the extent of this reporting is often minimal. However, in...
PLM: Automate your Product Development Compliance Process
Developing new and innovative products is essential for companies to survive and thrive -- however safety can never take a backseat to innovation. That is why many companies, like those in the Medical Devices, Aeronautics and Automotive industries, have strict...
The FDA UDI Rule: 5 Things You Need to Know
The release of the FDA final rule on Unique Device Identification (UDI) is expected this summer. Here are five things you need to know: 1. What is the UDI Rule? In July 2012, the FDA proposed a rule requiring medical device manufacturers to label their products with...
Tackling Email Archiving Regulations
Whether or not your in a heavily regulated industry, having a solid email archiving solution is an absolute necessity. Email’s importance in the workplace for the past decade-and-a-half is similar to the need of having a dial tone in years past. In addition, email is...
Risk Management in the PTC Integrity Medical Device Solution
An important part of creating any product intended for use in the medical field is that the manufacturer should have identified all of the risks involved in using the device, and have done their best to mitigate those risks before their product ever sees a patient....
Agile Development in Regulated Environments – Part 1: Yes, it can work
The value system and practices that embody Agile Software Development have been around for well over a decade, and have been touted as having "crossed the chasm" by organizations such as the Agile Alliance, Gartner, and Forrester Research. Numerous studies indicate...
How to Pinpoint the Benefits and Security Risks of Intelligent Medical Devices
Traditional medical devices are quickly going the way of the ear horn for one simple reason: their valuable data is confined to the device. Some have short-term storage capabilities. None, however, capture data over time for long-term analytics or storage. Intelligent...