Functional Safety Concept EGAS for Medical Devices

Abstract

For patient safety, it is important that a medical device can safely and reliably perform its intended purpose. The challenge in medical technology is that medical devices are heterogeneous systems and thus no widely applicable standard concepts for functional safety exist in medical technology. This is also reflected in the regulatory landscape, with its rather generally applicable standards. Patient safety is currently achieved by performing continuous risk management with an acceptable level of residual risk. Functional safety and its design concepts, as applied in other industries, have so far found little application in the field of medical technology. In this paper, the automotive safety concept "EGAS" is analyzed with regard to its applicability for medical devices. Based on the investigated example of a medical ventilator, important parallels were found between the automotive and the medical device sector, indicating the possibility of successfully applying the EGAS safety concept to medical devices.