Medical Device Industry Survey Reveals Increase in Agile Development

The survey results also show rising concerns about managing risk and proving compliance

MINNEAPOLIS, May 15, 2018 – Perforce Software, a provider of solutions to enterprise teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale along the development lifecycle, released the results of a global survey of medical device professionals. Key findings show increased concerns for mitigating risk and proving compliance during the development process.

“Balancing compliance and risk management with fast-paced innovation is a tough challenge for medical device developers,” said Tim Russell, Chief Product Officer, Perforce. “This year’s survey results illustrate how well respondents are addressing the challenge.”

Proving compliance and passing audits is critical in the medical device industry. Just 46 percent of the respondents were confident that they could pass an FDA audit.

Managing risk remains a concern as well, with 24 percent of respondents struggling with risk analysis. Many still use Microsoft Word and Excel to document development processes, which makes it difficult to manage risk.

More medical device teams (49 percent of respondents) are embracing Agile development to accelerate product delivery. Adopting the right tools will aid Agile development and provide traceability. This can help teams manage compliance and risk.

Innovating in the medical device industry can be difficult. Heavy industry regulations are a known challenge, and 57 percent believe that regulations get in the way of innovation. Using the right tools will help development teams free up time to innovate.

“Nearly 200 medical device professionals shared their opinions on development today,” said Janet Dryer, CEO, Perforce. “They want to keep up with technological trends, prove compliance, and innovate. By sharing these results, we aim to help others in the industry take positive next steps toward better medical device development.”

The complete 2018 State of Medical Device Development Survey Results are now available.

About Perforce

Perforce is a leading provider of enterprise-scale software solutions to technology developers and development operations (“DevOps”) teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale during all phases of the development lifecycle. Enterprises across the globe rely on its agile planning and ALM tools, developer collaboration, static code analysis, version control and repository management solutions as the foundation for successful DevOps at scale. Perforce is trusted by the world's most innovative brands, including NVIDIA, Pixar, Scania, Ubisoft, and VMware. Perforce has offices in Minneapolis, MN, Alameda, CA, Mason, OH, Boston, MA, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Germany, India, and Australia, and sales partners around the globe. For more information, please visit www.perforce.com.