Over 2,400 medical device manufacturers from around the world have signed up to use the Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN), the de facto global standard for identifying the world’s medical devices, since April 2019.
The GMDN is now used by over 5,200 registered member organisations around the world - an increase of 86% in five months.
This follows its introduction of a new free membership on 1 April 2019, which has seen a rise in uptake from manufacturers. This allows them access to the core data, while the existing membership charges remain for manufacturers needing the time-saving and value-added services provided by the GMDN Agency.
Mark Wasmuth, the CEO of the GMDN Agency, said: “Healthcare product regulators have welcomed the introduction of the new free service, which helps to remove local objections to compliance costs, something that the World Health Organisation has recently campaigned to reduce.
“The take-up of our new service has surprised us all at the Agency, especially as we have also simultaneously seen an increase in our paid-for membership scheme, which helps manufacturers needing the time-saving and value-added services provided by the GMDN Agency.
“These include the Term Status Notification service (which automatically updates subscribers to change events), multi-user accounts, data export, access to the higher-level Explorer groups and a priority enquiry service.”
John Wilkinson from the MHRA and the chairman of the GMDN Agency’s board of trustees, added: “After consulting with the industry, the GMDN Agency Board made a challenging decision to introduce the new membership scheme earlier this year. We are very pleased that thousands more manufacturers are now realising the benefit of using the GMDN, which has firmly established itself as the global naming convention for medical devices.
“Better patient outcomes come from clear and consistent naming and categorisation of all medical devices used in hospitals. Having such a widely used source as the GMDN is hugely valuable for regulators, hospital purchasers and epidemiological studies through having a clear, constantly-updated and widely used industry standard.”