Field Safety Notices about Accent™/ Anthem™, Accent MRI™/ Accent ST™, Assurity™/ Allure™ and Assurity MRI™

According to Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the Republic of Slovenia (via FOI), this field safety notices involved a device in Slovenia that was produced by Abbott Laboratories.

What is this?

Field safety notices are communications sent out by medical device manufacturers or their representatives in relation to actions that they may be taking in relation to their product that is on the market. These are mainly for health workers, but also for users. They can include recalls and alerts.

Learn more about the data here
  • Type of Event
    Field Safety Notice
  • Date
    2017-08-28
  • Event Country
  • Event Source
    AMPMDRS
  • Notes / Alerts
    Data from Slovenia is current through February 2019. All of the data comes from the Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the Republic of Slovenia (via FOI), except for the categories Manufacturer Parent Company and Product Classification.
    The Parent Company and the Product Classification were added by ICIJ.
    The parent company information is based on 2017 public records. The device classification information comes from FDA’s Product Classification by Review Panel, based on matches of recall data from the U.S. and Slovenia.
  • Extra notes in the data
  • Reason
    We are writing to inform you that a new firmware update (software type) of the pacemaker is available to prevent the risk of unauthorized access to our pacemakers using radio frequency (rf) communication (e.G. accent ™ / anthem ™, accent mri ™ / accent st ™, assurance ™ / allure ™ and assurance mri ™). the updated firmware provides additional security against unauthorized access to these devices, thus reducing the chances of a successful cyber-security attack.

Manufacturer

  • Manufacturer Parent Company (2017)
  • Manufacturer comment
    “We are in constant communication with regulatory agencies and competent authorities worldwide which allows us to implement global recalls or in-country communication quickly and effectively,” Abbott, which now owns St. Jude Medical told ICIJ in a statement. In addition to sending global notices to physicians worldwide, we also make sure that product advisories are available online and classification of product recalls and product advisories are determined by global regulatory bodies which can impact the timing in any given country. MD companies follow varying regulations in different countries. In come countries software is not regulated so a recall in one country related to software would not be classified as a recall or field action in another. In addition, review cycles within the regulatory process can be different in each country which can impact communication and recall timing.
  • Source
    AMPMDRS