Classification of medical devices

The regulatory authorities recognize different classes of medical devices, based on their design complexity, their use characteristics, and their potential for harm if misused. Each country or region defines these categories in different ways. The authorities also recognize that some devices are provided in combination with drugs, and regulation of these combination products takes this factor into consideration.

Learn about medical devices

A medical device is a product used for medical purposes in patients, in diagnosis, therapy or surgery[citation needed]. Whereas medicinal products (also called pharmaceuticals) achieve their principal action by pharmacological, metabolic or immunological means. Medical devices act by other means like physical, mechanical, thermal, physico-chemical or chemical means. Medical devices are included in the category: Medical technology.

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 What medical Technology is ?

2000 – present

• 26 June 2000 - Human Genome draft completed
• 2001 Telesurgery - Jacques Marescaux [18]
• 2001 Artificial Liver - Kenneth Matsumura [18]
• 2001 Self-Healing Materials Scott White [18]

1900–1999

• 1901 – Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood types
• 1901 – Alois Alzheimer identifies the first case of what becomes known as Alzheimer's disease
• 1903 - Willem Einthoven discovers electrocardiography (ECG/EKG)
• 1906 – Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets
• 1907 – Paul Ehrlich develops a chemotherapeutic cure for sleeping sickness
• 1908 – Victor Horsley and R. Clarke invents the stereotactic method
• 1909 – First Intrauterine device described by Richard Richter.^[15]
• 1910 - Hans Christian Jacobeus performs the first laparoscopy on humans
• 1917 – Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovers the malarial fever shock therapy for general paresis of the insane
• 1921 – Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets
• 1921 – Frederick Banting and Charles Best discover insulin – important for the treatment of diabetes
• 1921 – Fidel Pagés pioneers epidural anesthesia
• 1923 – First vaccine for Diphtheria
• 1926 – First vaccine for Pertussis
• 1927 – First vaccine for Tuberculosis
• 1927 – First vaccine for Tetanus
• 1928 – Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
• 1929 – Hans Berger discovers human electroencephalography
• 1932 – Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotherapeutic cure for streptococcus
• 1933 – Manfred Sakel discovers insulin shock therapy
• 1935 – Ladislas J. Meduna discovers metrazol shock therapy

1800–1899

• 1800 – Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
• 1816 – Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope
• 1818 – James Blundell performs the first successful human blood transfusion
• 1842 – Crawford Long performs the first surgical operation using anaesthesia with ether
• 1846 – First painless surgery with general anaesthetic
• 1847 – Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to prevent puerperal fever

1500–1800

• 1543 – Andreas Vesalius publishes De Fabrica Corporis Humani which corrects Greek medical errors and revolutionizes European medicine
• 1546 – Girolamo Fracastoro proposes that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seedlike entities
• 1553 – Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of blood through the lungs. He is accused of heresy and burned at the stake
• 1556 – Amato Lusitano describes venous valves in the Ázigos vein
• 1559 – Realdo Colombo describes the circulation of blood through the lungs in detail
• 1563 – Garcia de Orta founds tropical medicine with his treatise on Indian diseases and treatments
• 1596 – Li Shizhen publishes Běncǎo Gāngmù or Compendium of Materia Medica
• 1603 – Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which allow blood to flow only toward the heart
• 1628 – William Harvey explains the circulatory system in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
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