BACK
Sample Pages RCGLOBAL
Sample Pages of
EVIDENCE PRODUCT CHECKLIST
For the standard IEC 60601-1-4 
Edition 1.1 2000-04

IEC 60601-1-4: Medical Electrical Equipment Part 1: General Requirements for Safety.  Part 4. Programmable Electrical Medical Systems

Introduction
The process of defining what is necessary for compliance with a software engineering process standard such as IEC 60601-1-4 “Medical Electrical Equipment Part 1: General Requirements for Safety. Part 4. Programmable Electrical Medical Systems” is sometimes confusing and laborious because the directions contained in the standard may be unclear or ambiguous. To aid in determining what is actually “required” by the standard in the way of physical evidence of compliance, the experts at SEPT have produced this checklist. This checklist is constructed around a classification scheme of physical evidence comprised of procedures, plans, records, documents, audits, and reviews. SEPT has carefully reviewed IEC 60601-1-4 and defined the physical evidence required based upon this classification scheme. SEPT has conducted a second review of the complete list to ensure that the standard’s producers did not leave out a physical piece of evidence that a “reasonable person” would expect to find. It could certainly be argued that if the document did not call it out then it is not required; however if the standard were used by an enterprise to improve its software process, then it would make sense to recognize missing documents. Therefore, there are documents specified in this checklist that are implied by the standard, though not specifically called out in the standard, and they are designated by an asterisk (*) throughout this checklist.  If a document is called out more than one time, only the first reference is stipulated. 

There are occasional situations in which a procedure or document is not necessarily separate and could be contained within another document.  For example, the Software Detail Specification Document could be a subset of Software Design Specification. SEPT has called out these individual items separately to ensure that the organization does not overlook any facet of physical evidence.  If the organization does not require a separate document, and an item can be a subset of another document or record, then this fact should be denoted in the detail section of the checklist for that item.  This should be done in the form of a statement reflecting that the information for this document may be found in section XX of Document XYZ.  If the organizational requirements do not call for this physical evidence for a particular project, this should also be denoted with a statement reflecting that this physical evidence is not required and why.  The reasons for the evidence not being required should be clearly presented in this statement.  Further details on this step are provided in the in the Detail Steps section of the introduction.  The size of these documents could vary from paragraphs to volumes depending upon the size and complexity of the software project or business requirements.
Even through IEC 60601-1-4 does not reference ISO/IEC Standard 12207—“Software Life Cycle Processes”, the summary requirements of this document are called out in the checklist.  This important software engineering standard should be employed if an enterprise wants to gain the full benefits of applying IEC 60601-1-4 to producing medical electrical equipment containing software.  The user of this checklist should also be aware of the definitions of risk management called out in ISO Guide73—“Risk Management–Vocabulary--Guidelines for Use in Standards” when applying IEC 60601-1-4. 
COMPONENTS of the CHECKLIST 
This checklist is composed of 9 sections:

  • Section 1. Introduction
  • Section 2. Composite of all recommended IEC 60601-1-4 evidence products
  • Section 3-8. Individual checklists for each evidence type
  • Section 9. About the Author
PRODUCT SUPPORT 
All reasonable questions concerning this checklist or its use will be addressed free of charge for 60 days from time of purchase, up to a maximum of 4 hours consultation time.

Author’s Qualifications
Mr. Magee is convener of WG 7 (Life Cycle Management) for ISO/IEC JTC1 SC 7 (Software and Systems Engineering) standards group.  He has been a U.S. delegate to the International Plenary meetings since 1986.  In 1995 he was elected to the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core of 500 people who have significantly served the IEEE Society in standards development over its 50 year history.

IEC 60601-1-4  CLAUSE NUMBER and NAME
PROCEDURES
PLANS
RECORDS
DOCUMENTS
AUDITS and REVIEWS
1.203 Relationship to Other Standards . . . . .
1.203.3
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Procedures
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Procedures*
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Plans
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Plans*
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Records
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Records*
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Documents
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Documents*
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Audits
  • ISO 9000-3-1997 Requirements for Reviews
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Audits*
  • ISO/IEC 12207 Requirements for Reviews*
6.0 Identification, Marking and Documents . . . . .
6.8.201
  • Risk Management Procedure*
  • User Manual Procedure*
.
  • Residual Risk Records
  • User Manuals
  • Risk Management Procedure Review*
  • User Manual Procedure Review*
  • User Manuals Review*
6.8.202 . .
  • Configuration Management Record
. .
52.201 Documentation . . . . .
52.201.1
  • Documentation Procedure
  • Documentation Plan
  • Documentation Records
.
  • Documentation Plan Review
  • Documentation Procedure Review
52.201.2 . . . . .
© 2004. Software Engineering Process Technology (SEPT) All rights reserved.
RCGLOBAL
Home / Contact us: rcgroup@rcglobal.com