On October 2018, the MITRE Corporation and the Food and Drug Administration released their joint document, Medical Device Cybersecurity Regional Incident Preparedness and Response Playbook. This is the new Bible for organizations designing and manufacturing connected...
Compliance & Regulatory
How Cyber Security Requirements Can Throw your Medical Device Off Track
In our last article we talked about the four steps your organization must go through when designing secure connected medical devices. With the increasing attention paid to product security in this era of connected medical devices, many companies are scrambling to keep...
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...
Security and Compliance – What Your Company Needs to Know Part 1: Whitelisting
Security in the 21st century is a complicated game. The good guys are always playing catch up with the bad guys. Security is particularly important for medtech companies due to their specific compliance needs. Banking and fintech likewise have a high bar for security...
Security and Compliance – What Your Company Needs to Know Part 2: MBSA
You need more than just an antivirus and security suite to keep your system safe. You need multiple, non-redundant solutions covering various aspects of network security. In our last blog, we discussed the role of whitelisting in keeping your network secure. Now we’re...
How to Account for Complex Risk with Jama in Medical Device Manufacturing
Requirements management isn’t optional in many fields. Medical technology and finance are just two fields where regulatory compliance necessitates requirements management. You and other stakeholders simply must be in total agreement about the requirements of a given...
How to Navigate Compliance and Cyber Security Concerns in Smart Medical Devices
The Internet of Things is revolutionizing the medical device field. However, it’s also introducing new compliance headaches. What’s more, large-scale medical hacks loom large in the background. Medical device manufacturers can’t ignore the Internet of Things, but nor...
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....
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...
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....
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...
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...