Basics and Essentials of Medical Devices Safety Surveillance

Medical devices are being used in healthcare facilities for diagnosis, monitoring, prevention and treatment of an array of diseases. To ensure user/patient safety associated with the medical devices being used in healthcare industry, it is of utmost importance to closely monitor the adverse events associated with the medical devices through a robust, sustainable and scaled surveillance. Materiovigilance Programme of India (MvPI) provides a reliable system to report adverse events associated with medical devices. Under MvPI, various modalities to report adverse events associated with medical devices have been developed. These modalities include an editable medical device adverse event reporting form, a toll-free helpline number and a field safety corrective action form (FSCA). FSCA form is used to notify the regulatory authority and healthcare professionals on corrective actions or recall by the manufacturer. Due to the emergence of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, one-page editable form has been developed to boost the adverse event reporting of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs). MvPI also coordinates with healthcare facilities and medical device industries across the country for reporting the medical device-related adverse events. The collected scientific data is utilized to develop regulatory policies and enhance measures to ensure the quality of medical devices. All the healthcare workers are, therefore, encouraged to report adverse events to MvPI. This chapter aims to describe the systems, procedures and modalities available for the reporting of Medical Device Adverse Events (MDAEs) in India, in order to intensify the nature of reporting and creating an environment that encourages the public to perform MDAE reporting.