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Industries · Medical Devices & Diagnostics

Built for the rigor of device development. Engineered for the pace of modern innovation.

Narratize gives medical device and diagnostics teams a Product Knowledge Hub engineered for FDA design controls, EU MDR compliance, and the reality that every decision, change, and justification must be captured — defensibly — across a multi-year development cycle.

DESIGN CONTROLS · 21 CFR 820.30DHF READYUSER NEEDSInputDESIGN INPUTSInputDESIGN OUTPUTSOutputVERIFICATIONV&VVALIDATIONValidationTRACEABILITYDESIGN HISTORY FILE · COMPLETEDesign & Development PlanningCOMPLETEDesign Inputs & Outputs TracedCOMPLETEDesign Reviews DocumentedCOMPLETEVerification & ValidationIN REVIEWDesign TransferPENDING→ Every design control · traced · sourced · defensible
Challenges

Every device program runs on institutional knowledge the team can't afford to lose.

Medical device R&D sits at the intersection of FDA design controls, EU MDR compliance, multi-year development cycles, and the knowledge that patient safety rides on every decision. The challenges aren't generic innovation problems — they're specific to the industry, and they compound.

Challenge 01 · Compliance

Every design decision must be captured, justified, and traceable.

21 CFR 820.30 and ISO 13485 don't just demand that you build safe devices — they demand that you prove how you built them. Every design input, output, change, and review has to be defensible years later, to reviewers who weren't in the room when the decisions were made.

Challenge 02 · Cycle Time

Development cycles are measured in years, not months.

Device programs span three, five, sometimes ten years from concept to clearance. Across that timeline, engineers rotate, priorities shift, and institutional memory erodes. The team that submits the 510(k) rarely matches the team that wrote the user needs.

Challenge 03 · Knowledge Loss

The experts who built your platform are getting ready to retire.

Mechanical engineers, firmware leads, regulatory veterans — the people who understand your legacy platforms hold decades of tacit knowledge about why decisions were made. When they leave, that reasoning doesn't come with them unless someone has captured it.

Challenge 04 · Platform Continuity

Every new device builds on the one before — or doesn't.

Platform strategies only work when each generation carries forward the reasoning, trade-offs, and learnings from the last. Without a structured way to preserve that context, each new device ends up re-litigating decisions that were already made three generations ago.

Use Cases

One hub per device. Every function contributes. Every submission builds alongside the work.

Narratize doesn't adapt a generic innovation platform to medical devices. The workflows, templates, and agents are engineered for how regulated device teams actually produce and defend their work.

Use Case 01

Design History File assembly, continuously.

Your Design History File builds itself as your team works. Design inputs link to user needs. Outputs link to inputs. Verification activities link to outputs. Every decision carries its reasoning and source. When audit or submission time arrives, the DHF is already complete — not a frantic assembly job the month before.

What this changes
DHF compilation stops being a recurring crisis. Audits stop being archaeology. The file is always current.
Use Case 02

Regulatory submission packages, ready earlier.

510(k), PMA, De Novo, EU MDR technical files — each one built from the same structured hub knowledge your team has been capturing all along. Your regulatory affairs team stops chasing documentation across SharePoint, email, and engineers' drives. They start assembling submissions from a single, source-traced foundation.

What this changes
Submission prep timelines compress. Regulatory gets the context and citations they need on day one.
Use Case 03

Design controls traceability, end to end.

The hub maintains live traceability across user needs, design inputs, design outputs, verification, validation, and transfer. When a requirement changes, every impacted artifact is visible. When an auditor asks for the chain of evidence behind a single design decision, your team can produce it in minutes.

What this changes
Traceability stops being a matrix rebuilt quarterly. It becomes a live property of the work itself.
Use Case 04

Risk management that stays current.

Your Risk Management File — hazards, harms, control measures, residual risk assessments — lives inside the same hub as the rest of your product knowledge. When a design change is proposed, the relevant risk analyses surface automatically. ISO 14971 compliance stops being a parallel track and becomes part of the design record itself.

What this changes
Risk management stops living in a separate spreadsheet. It becomes a living layer of the design record.
Functions

Every team on a device program runs on the same hub.

From R&D and design engineering to regulatory affairs, quality, clinical, and commercial — every function that touches a device program contributes to and draws from the same Product Knowledge Hub. The handoffs stop being lossy.

R&D & Design Engineering

Capture the reasoning behind every design choice.

Engineers document decisions as they make them. The trade-offs, the rejected alternatives, and the logic stay with the design — not in someone's head or a Slack thread.

Regulatory Affairs

Assemble submission packages from source-traced evidence.

510(k) and PMA submissions built from the hub's structured knowledge. Every claim in the submission traces back to the design record. Reviewers see the chain of evidence immediately.

Quality

Keep QMS documentation aligned with active design work.

Design reviews, change controls, CAPA documentation, and audit responses all run on the same hub — so QMS documentation stays synchronized with what's actually happening in development.

Clinical Affairs

Connect clinical evidence to design decisions.

Clinical investigation plans, study reports, and post-market surveillance data link back to the design controls they support. When a clinical finding affects a design input, the connection surfaces.

Manufacturing & Process

Design transfer that actually carries the design.

Process validation, DMR assembly, and transfer documentation inherit the design history directly — so manufacturing starts with the full context of why the device was designed the way it was.

Commercial & Marketing

Claims grounded in verified device performance.

Every marketing claim, clinician-facing material, and sales enablement asset rests on verified design and clinical evidence. The distance between R&D truth and go-to-market message shrinks to nothing.

Customers

Built for the teams who design, clear, and scale life-critical products.

Narratize's medical device customers span diagnostics platforms, surgical devices, implantables, wearables, and digital therapeutics — all operating under the same reality: the rigor cannot slip, and the pace cannot either.

Device Manufacturers

Teams running multi-year device programs under FDA and MDR scrutiny.

R&D and regulatory teams at established device manufacturers use Narratize to carry institutional knowledge across long development cycles, executive transitions, and platform generations — so the tenth device benefits from lessons learned across the first nine.

Diagnostics Platforms

Diagnostics companies building across regulated assay portfolios.

Platforms with multiple cleared assays use Narratize to share core technology knowledge across assay teams — chemistry, software, instrumentation — while maintaining the distinct regulatory records each assay requires.

Emerging & Series B+ Innovators

Growth-stage teams scaling from first clearance to platform strategy.

Device innovators moving from their first 510(k) toward a broader platform use Narratize to institutionalize what worked in their first clearance — so the second, third, and fourth clearance run on the accumulated intelligence, not a blank slate.

Digital Health & SaMD

Software-as-a-medical-device teams navigating rapid iteration under regulated controls.

SaMD teams use Narratize to reconcile the pace of software development with the rigor of medical device regulation — keeping design controls, risk management, and regulatory documentation synchronized with continuously evolving product.

Outcomes

Cycles compress. Documentation improves. Nine hours a week return to engineering.

67%
Faster innovation cycles

Measured across Narratize customers, cycle-time compression without shortcuts on evidence, rigor, or defensibility.

9 hrs
Recovered per person per week

Time freed from documentation assembly, evidence chasing, and context reconstruction — returned to engineering, regulatory, and clinical work.

Higher documentation quality

Documentation produced with Narratize's structured workflows scores materially higher on completeness and defensibility than traditional approaches.

See Narratize Running on Your Device Program

Your next submission should start already half-written.

30 minutes. Bring a device program in flight — or one you're scoping. We'll walk you through what a Design History File, submission package, or risk management record looks like when it's been building itself as your team works.

Schedule a Demo →
No commitment · Live walkthrough · Your program context