Statistical Procedures For The Medical Device Industry

This book provides a reference for people working in the design, development, and manufacturing of medical devices. ​While there are no statistical methods specifically intended for medical devices, there are methods that are commonly applied to various problems in the design, manufacturing, and quality control of medical devices. The aim of this book is not to turn everyone working in the medical device industries into mathematical statisticians; rather, the goal is to provide some help in thinking statistically, and knowing where to go to answer some fundamental questions, such as justifying a method used to qualify/validate equipment, or what information is necessary to support the choice of sample sizes. While, there are no statistical methods specifically designed for analysis of medical device data, there are some methods that seem to appear regularly in relation to medical devices. For example, the assessment of receiver operating characteristic curves is fundamental to development of diagnostic tests, and accelerated life testing is often critical for assessing the shelf life of medical device products. Another example is sensitivity/specificity computations are necessary for in-vitro diagnostics, and Taguchi methods can be very useful for designing devices. Even notions of equivalence and noninferiority have different interpretations in the medical device field compared to pharmacokinetics. It contains topics such as dynamic modeling, machine learning methods, equivalence testing, and experimental design, for example. This book is for those with no statistical experience, as well as those with statistical knowledgeable—with the hope to provide some insight into what methods are likely to help provide rationale for choices relating to data gathering and analysis activities for medical devices.

In recent years the number of innovative medicinal products and devices submitted and approved by regulatory bodies has declined dramatically. The medical product development process is no longer able to keep pace with increasing technologies, science and innovations and the goal is to develop new scientific and technical tools and to make product development processes more efficient and effective. Statistical Methods in Healthcare focuses on the application of statistical methodologies to evaluate promising alternatives and to optimize the performance and demonstrate the effectiveness of those that warrant pursuit is critical to success. Statistical methods used in planning, delivering and monitoring health care, as well as selected statistical aspects of the development and/or production of pharmaceuticals and medical devices are also addressed. With a focus on finding solutions to these challenges, this book: Provides a comprehensive, in-depth treatment of statistical methods in healthcare, along with a reference source for practitioners and specialists in health care and drug development. Offers a broad coverage of standards and established methods through leading edge techniques. Uses an integrated, case-study based approach, with focus on applications. Looks at the use of analytical and monitoring schemes to evaluate therapeutic performance. Features the application of modern quality management systems to clinical practice, and to pharmaceutical development and production processes. Addresses the use of modern Statistical methods such as Adaptive Design, Seamless Design, Data Mining, Bayesian networks and Bootstrapping that can be applied to support the challenging new vision. Practitioners in healthcare-related professions, ranging from clinical trials to care delivery to medical device design, as well as statistical researchers in the field, will benefit from this book.

The focus of this book is to understand and apply the different SPC tools in a company regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): those that manufacture pharmaceutical products, biologics, medical devices, food, cosmetics, and so on. The book is not intended to provide an intensive course in statistics; instead, it is intended to provide a how-to guide about the application of the diverse array of statistical tools available to analyze and improve the processes in an organization regulated by FDA. This book is aimed at engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, managers, supervisors, and all other professionals responsible to measure and improve the quality of their processes. Although the examples and case studies presented throughout the book are based on situations found in an organization regulated by FDA, the book can also be used to understand the application of those tools in any type of industry. Readers will obtain a better understanding of some of the statistical tools available to control their processes and be encouraged to study, with a greater level of detail, each of the statistical tools presented throughout the book. The content of this book is the result of the author’s almost 20 years of experience in the application of statistics in various industries, and his combined educational background of engineering and law that he has used to provide consulting services to dozens of FDA-regulated organizations.

We are bombarded with statistical data each and every day, and healthcare professionals are no exception. All sectors of healthcare rely on data provided by insurance companies, consultants, research firms, and government to help them make a host of decisions regarding the delivery of medical services. But while these health professionals rely on data, do they really make the best use of the information? Not if they fail to understand whether the assumptions behind the formulas generating the numbers make sense. Not if they don’t understand that the world of healthcare is flooded with inaccurate, misleading, and even dangerous statistics. The purpose of this book is to provide members of medical and other professions, including scientists and engineers, with a basic understanding of statistics and probability together with an explanation and worked examples of the techniques. It does not seek to confuse the reader with in-depth mathematics but provides basic methods for interpreting data and making inferences. The worked examples are medically based, but the principles apply to the analysis of any numerical data.

From the author of Statistical Applications for Health Information Management, this text provides a solid foundation of the fundamentals of statistics in health information technology in an accessible and reader-friendly format. A single case study is woven throughout the book to serve as an example for each statistical process covered. Attention is given to morbidity and mortality measures, graphical display of data, measurement, central tendency and variability, normal distribution and statistical inference, and inferential statistics. Written specifically for health information technology students who need a basic understanding of the topic, this text is ideal for those with a modest background in mathematics and no prior training in statistics. Features: • Introduces students to how statistical techniques can be used to describe and make inferences from healthcare data. • Includes traditional hospital statistics such as average length of stay and total inpatient service days. • Uses examples in both SPSS and Microsoft Excel.

The very rapid pace of advances in biomedical research promises us a wide range of new drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures. The extent to which these discoveries will benefit the public, however, depends in large part on the methods we choose for developing and testing them. Modern Methods of Clinical Investigation focuses on strategies for clinical evaluation and their role in uncovering the actual benefits and risks of medical innovation. Essays explore differences in our current systems for evaluating drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures; health insurance databases as a tool for assessing treatment outcomes; the role of the medical profession, the Food and Drug Administration, and industry in stimulating the use of evaluative methods; and more. This book will be of special interest to policymakers, regulators, executives in the medical industry, clinical researchers, and physicians.

The original edition of this text, Clinical Evaluation of Medical Devices: Principles and Case Studies, provided the first overview of key pr- ciples and approaches to medical device clinical trials, illustrated with a series of detailed, real-world case studies. The book is designed as a resource for clinical professionals and regulatory specialists working in the field of new medical device development and marketing. Since the first edition of this text was published in 1997, the rapid pace of inno- tion in health care technologies continues to yield exciting and important new products. The regulatory landscape has also evolved, reflecting some of the changes and needs within the medical device industry. The purpose of Clinical Evaluation of Medical Devices: Principles and Case Studies, Second Edition is to provide an updated and expanded presentation of the scientific methods and regulatory requirements applied to the study of new significant risk medical devices. The text now includes (1) new information on the requirements and process for gaining reimbursement of new products from Medicare and private insurers, with case studies of research specifically designed for this p- pose as well as health care technology assessment methods; (2) infor- tion on new statistical methodologies applied to medical device trials; and (3) all new case studies, including examples of combination pr- ucts, three-phase development models (i. e. , feasibility, FDA approval, Medicare reimbursement), and novel study designs.