Tag: quality management system

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eQMS is Like a Chocolate Selection box: Choosing the Right Quality Management System

Choosing an electronic Quality Management System (eQMS) might not sound like it has much in common with picking out a chocolate bar, but in many ways, the process is surprisingly similar. Both involve sifting through a variety of options to find the perfect fit for your specific needs and tastes. Just like when you’re deciding between dark, milk, or white chocolate, selecting the right eQMS requires considering your unique preferences, goals, and requirements.

Do you prioritize smoothness and simplicity, or do you need something with a bit more complexity and richness? In this blog, we’ll explore how the decision-making process for an eQMS mirrors the sweet (and sometimes overwhelming) experience of choosing your favourite chocolate bar. So, let’s unwrap the similarities and help you make a decision that’s both satisfying and beneficial

The eQMS Landscape

Here’s an interesting fact, just like chocolate, there are over 100 different versions of eQMS software available today! The remarkable thing is that you can build a compliant quality management system with any of these tools. You could even create one using basic platforms like SharePoint or Google Drive!

What Makes the Difference?

So what separates one eQMS from another? Different systems offer varying functionalities:

  • Some leverage AI (artificial intelligence) capabilities
  • Others focus on simplicity
  • Many interconnect with other business functions

It’s all about understanding what’s right for you and your organization. Quality management system software provides both a tool and a framework to build your QMS around. The work and effort required to build a QMS is largely driven by your specific company needs.

The Value of Expertise

This is where consultants become valuable. Through their careers, consultants experience different types of QMS systems built by different organisations at various stages of development. We can help you determine not only where to begin but also where you may want to go in the future. Our perspective and expertise can support you in developing a long-term strategy for quality planning and QMS implementation.

Our Recommended Options

While hundreds of options exist, here are three QMS software providers we regularly work with:

  1. Cognidox  – This is the system we use to build our own ISO-compliant QMS. It offers simple setup, ease of use, and scalability based on your company’s needs rather than forcing you into a predefined structure.
  2. TraceX – A robust alternative with its own strengths and considerations.
  3. ISMS – Another effective system that works well for certain organizational needs.

Both TraceX and ISMS work excellently, each with positives and negatives. The key is understanding what’s important to you, and we’d be happy to spend time with you to discuss these points. What works wonders for one organisation might not be suitable—or even detrimental—for another. This largely depends on each organisation’s unique needs, processes, and goals – just like how someone absolutely adores a coconut Bounty, whereas someone else, not so much!

Finding Your Perfect Match

Sometimes you want a Bounty, sometimes a Snickers, and sometimes you’re not even sure what you’re craving. But what you don’t want to do is settle for something medicore.

For more information on what’s right for you and how to effectively build a quality management system, get in touch with us on [email protected]. We can discuss these processes in more detail and help build you an effective, right-first-time quality management system tailored to your needs, after all, we maintain and work within our own QMS and know that a quality management system is for life, not just for your audits!

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IVDeology now offering QMS Hosting Services!

One of the biggest challenges we see is the adoption of an effective Quality Management System (QMS) too late in the design and development process of a medical device, especially for start up companies who don’t have the internal resources, funds or time to do so!

Great ideas and great products being delayed due to not having the quality and technical documentation required to meet regulatory requirements. Without a QMS, you don’t have a product! But we all know the challenge that companies face when they’re met with the dreaded question of ‘do you have a Quality management system?’

QMS Challenges we see faced by small businesses: 

  • Understanding the regulatory requirements – these go hand in hand
  • Finding the right QMS offering – this can be size, costing, adaptability, and so on!
  • Dedicating time and resources to the QMS
  • Developing Quality and Regulatory expertise 
  • Affordability of effective solutions 

Developing a QMS can be a significant challenge for a small business. It can be expensive and time consuming. Most QMS providers provide basic templates and technical support, but it takes time and specialist knowledge to build an effective QMS to allow business growth and regulatory approval. And on the other hand, some offer way too much for what small companies actually need right away, meaning you’ve overpaid for way more than you need, which can lead to being overwhelmed and frustrated.

So what are the benefits of a QMS? 

  • Meets regulatory requirements – again, they go hand in hand
  • Enables growth and expansion 
  • Improves operational efficiency 
  • Reduces product and business risk 
  • Build customer confidence 
  • Offers a competitive advantage 

Read our previous blog: “A QMS isn’t just for IVDR conformity assessment…. it’s for life!” to learn more about how implementing and maintaining a QMS that works for you is so important

 IVDeology have a proven track record supporting our customers build, host and maintain a quality management system specific to their industry: 

  • ISO 9001 – General quality management system, ideal for service providers 
  • ISO 13485 – Specific for Medical Devices and In vitro diagnostic manufacturers 
  • ISO 17025 – Quality Management System for testing laboratories 

Our aim is to provide a common-sense approach to quality compliance, and we understand that start up companies cannot afford all the bells and whistles for a fully fledged QMS that they just can’t and won’t need to utilise yet.

We now offer eQMS hosting, a solution that we feel every small business can benefit from. But what is it?

IVDeology use Cognidox, an eQMS platform that allows us to build our system round our own needs, we can create templates, process with change controls, manage procedures and personalise it to what we deem important for us.

We have the ability to host your company within our eQMS system, a safe and secure, private account within Cognidox that allows you to begin with 1-2 members to start building your Quality management system.

Benefits of us hosting you within Cognidox:

  • You have access to all our templates for documents and procedures, and these can be tailored to you and your product(s) and processes
  • We use Cognidox! You can receive training and a demo of the systems, and you can add on adhoc support from us if you need it later on
  • It can be as basic as you like for what you need now to comply with the regulations
  • Buildable and manageable, both for content but also adding users if and when your team grows
  • You can capture your QMS and move it over to your own system whenever you decide you can begin to host your own eQMS internally – so you won’t lose any data or have to start again
  • Secure, reliable system that auditors can be given access to

We have been onboarding several customers who are excited to be hosted in our system, and we’d be more than happy to demonstrate or give a free demo access for those who would like to try it out, you can email us on [email protected], drop us a message on LinkedIn, or book right into our calendar by clicking here: Bookings

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Regulatory Strategy: What is it, and why do you need one?

If you are planning to place an in vitro diagnostic medical device (IVD) onto the market, It is critically important that you consider your regulatory strategy at the earliest opportunity. In our experience, building an effective strategy for regulatory strategy can be the difference between achieving product market access or not.

What is a Regulatory Strategy?

A Regulatory Strategy is a documented plan of all regulatory activities and deliverables that are required to be performed by a Legal Manufacturer. It should also align with the overall objectives of your organisation as defined within your vision, mission and business plan.

This should lay out a framework for placing an IVD on the market or markets depending on your commercial opportunity. Typically, the organisation will identify a priority list of countries where it is intending to sell the devices, the regulatory strategy describes the order of which these countries are being registered in.

Once the device is on the market, the plan continues to drive the regulatory surveillance mechanisms described as part of Post Market Surveillance as part of your ISO 13485 Quality Management System. It should also include a plan for meeting any transitions to updated regulatory requirements or ISO standards associated with the device.

Why do you need one?

For devices being placed on the European market under European IVD Regulation (IVDR), Article 10 (Manufacturers Obligations) describes the requirement for maintaining a regulatory strategy:

The quality management system shall address at least the following aspects:

(a) a strategy for regulatory compliance, including compliance with conformity assessment procedures and procedures for management of modifications to the devices covered by the system;

Furthermore, Annex IX requires the Quality Management System to include within its procedures, “a strategy for regulatory compliance, including processes for identification of relevant legal requirements, qualification, classification, handling of equivalence, choice of, and compliance with, conformity assessment procedures.”

In addition to the regulatory expectations, it is also hugely beneficial to plan and document the path to device registration and beyond. It also offers clear evidence to investors that the route to market has been considered and is planned.

When should you create one?

Typically, the regulatory strategy is formed, at a basic level, early on within the design and development process. Once your business vision and mission has been identified, and your business plan establishes the potential for the development of an IVD, the route to achieving that vision should now be considered.

Developing a regulatory strategy is an iterative process as many of the elements required will not have been considered or nailed down. This is entirely normal, but it is important to do the groundwork and start somewhere!

Our Approach to Regulatory Strategy

Education of the basic IVD requirements

A regulatory strategy can take many forms and will grow as you progress through the D&D process. We prefer to work with our SME customers and provide a regulatory strategy blended with some in-house training (virtually or on your site globally) on the key IMDRF principles, definitions and concepts of the regulation of IVDs. We aim to cover the main markets notably the EU, UK and MDSAP countries, to give you the best possible start in understanding what you need to know before developing your device.

Evaluate device type and classification and routes to market

Using your existing ideas of what your device is, and how it should be used, we can help you construct an Intended Purpose Statement, which is the bedrock of how IVDs are classified and assessed. We will guide you through how to assign device nomenclature including GMDN or EMDN codes to understand the routes for conformity assessment and submission requirements, EU Notified Bodies or UK Approved bodies as required. The output of this evaluation will be detailed within a Regulatory Strategy Report, which you can share with your wider team and investors.

The strategy should sit alongside the Quality Plan, used to identify and plan the implementation of a Quality Management System (QMS).

End to end planning

We can incorporate our knowledge to help you understand an estimation of design and development stages with associated costs. This will help you identify when you need to grow and when to secure additional funding. Our experience however is that bringing an IVD to is never a straight line and your regulatory strategy may change over time. We can give you the background knowledge and tools along the way to navigate the complexities and challenges that you may face.

Be part of the journey with you

As part of the Abingdon Health group, IVDeology can spend time with you to understand, explain and build your regulatory strategy together that works towards your timelines and business project goals, but not only that, we can work together as a strong technical team with your business to support any gaps you may need. IVDeology building your regulatory plan with you means you always have a supportive hand for any questions, queries or concerns every step of the way with a team who knows your goals and vision.

If you’d like to discuss a regulatory plan, whether you have an existing one already or starting from scratch, you can book a call here, or email us on [email protected] and we’d be happy to help!

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IVDeology Partners with MedBoard

Cutting through the Regulatory Noise: Our new partnership with MedBoard

It seems that the medical device regulatory world has gone into overdrive in the last few years. The rate of regulatory change and the demand for clear guidance around them has substantially increased, especially when you focus on the European Union and the UK which are th key areas IVDeology specialise in. It is now getting to the point where one regultory expert simply cannot know everything they need to know, and this is without the peripheral requirements of REACH, CLP, Sustainability, Environmental and Digital. The need to find the right information from a trusted source has never been so important, as well as in a timely manner.

Our Regs Consultant Fiona Thompson commented the following:


“When I left my previous role to start at IVDeology, finding relevant, correct regulatory updates was one of the things I found most challenging. Having come from a large company, this was all done at a Corporate level and at our site we found out information from notifications or changes to the Global procedures sent out. Out of this corporate world, the places I knew where to look for information had all disappeared and trying to find all the potential websites to set up personnel alerts, I will be honest, was very painful – and I’m still sure I haven’t found them all.”

Even from the early days of IVDeology, the aim was to develop a strong team connected to a wide and diverse industry network, which would help us inform our customers on any Quality and Regulatory updates relating to IVDs and Medical Devices. We do this knowing that many of our SME customer don’t have this network themselves and getting the right information can be a very difficult and time-consuming thing.


Recently we have started using a system called MedBoard – and what a game-changer this is!


“MedBoard is a dedicated search engine for the sector. You can set up customised reviews with relevant key words to keep up to date with new regulatory news in specific countries that you are interested in as well as conduct searches for PMS, literature searches etc. It also sends you email alerts when new information is released. What MedBoard does is provide you with a starting point for regulatory intelligence, based on trusted resources, this allows you the opportunity to build your understanding and supplement your existing knowledge network.”

How do we use MedBoard to support our customers?


IVDeology have used the MedBoard subscription services since early 2023 as we personally find the subscription beneficial to cut through the noise and share the industry updates that are tailored and beneficial to our customers.
IVDeology is proud to funnel information down to our customers and recommend MedBoard’s services and be able to add:

a) timely regualatory updates from a trusted source
b) offer insights on the impact of these updates, using our in-depth knowledge of the IVD indsutry

The outcome for this is to give you the ability to make informed decisions, develop strategies and mitigate changes to the IVD industry relevant to your devices and markets.

At IVDeology, we don’t believe these is a one size fits all model for what we do, as we are committed to helping you in the way that works best.

We’re happy to be able to share updates from MedBoard and put you in touch if you wish to sign up individually as a company to be able to personalise the package at which level you wish, as MedBoard offer several layers of package support depending on budget and need including a new artificial intelligence scanning tool as well as software Validation documents approach for QMS/GxPs processes overviews.

IVDeology adds a layer of support to help explain and discuss the updates and how this may affect your company, teams and projects. This sits well alongside our existing compliance services including UK Responsible Person (UKRP), Person Responsible for Regulatory compliance (PRRC), training, ad-hoc and project support. You can find more about these services on our website.


And to support one step further, IVDeology have a certified team of Quality experts in ISO9001 and ISO13485 to help with implementation of QMS systems and remediation, including software validation.


We don’t make anything from sign ups, we just really think the tool is an excellent creation, and side by side we can create a support system of clear updates whilst also breaking it down into easy digestible actions which saves you valuable time.

For further information or a demonstration on how we can help you, please book a call with Casey or drop us an email at [email protected] to know more.