Instructions for use

The instructions for use (IFU) is the user manual of a medical device. This documentation provides information about how to use the device, when and what to use it for, technical specifications, maintenance requirements and conditions, troubleshooting information, or risk-related information. Every medical device manufacturer has an obligation to create an accurate and effective IFU that will help guide medical personnel and patients on how to use the device best in the way it was first intended.

The IFU is also important documentation from a legal perspective. Suppose the documentation doesn’t contain accurate information on how the device can and should be used. In that case, the manufacturer may be legally liable for damage or harm to human life. To avoid these situations, it is of utmost importance to create an IFU that is easy to search through, is written in a language that is easy to understand by medical professionals or patients, and makes it easy for people to apply that information to the task at hand.

How does structured content help? 

Structured content can help you build documentation that is accurate in a shorter time than just using a simple word-processing tool. With a structured content authoring tool, authors, editors, and subject matter experts (SMEs) can create and give their feedback on small chunks of content, which, once created, can be used anywhere as many times as needed. With a structured content approach, your organization can work with information that is not duplicated, and that can be easily changed across all the instances where it appears. Handling instructions, storage information, or installation information can be updated across all documents where they appear, with just one edit to the source content component.