The GMDN, the de facto global standard for identifying the world’s millions of medical devices, has been made freely available to all users for the first time on 1st April 2019.
The new free Basic membership will allow users access to the GMDN data, while the existing membership charges will remain for 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 UK’s Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and a member of the GMDN Agency’s board of trustees, said: “Better patient outcomes come from consistent naming and categorisation, so this measure to help smaller manufacturers on tight budgets use the GMDN is important for helping embed its use as the global standard.”