DIA's Annual Canadian Meeting: New Reality / New Frontiers

The term medical device covers a vast range of equipment, from simple tongue depressors to haemodialysis machines. Like medicines and other health technologies, they are essential for patient care. On the global front, the International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) is a voluntary group of medical device regulators from around the world who have come together to build on the strong foundational work of the Global Harmonization Task Force on Medical Devices (GHTF) and aims to accelerate international medical device regulatory harmonization and convergence. In Canada, the booming mobile app economy is quickly expanding into the health industry. There's a growing list of health-oriented apps and sensors that regular individuals can buy, from pedometers and heart-rate monitoring apps to general wellness-tracking apps. We're getting medically wired both at the professional and consumer end and the regulation of these medical devices is a vast and rapidly evolving field.