Everyday, medical device advancements help save the lives of patients in Canada by improving the accuracy of diagnoses, enhancing treatments and cure of diseases, reducing long-term disabilities and helping to provide better medical care. Covering a wide range of products, medical device examples include pacemakers, artificial heart valves, hip implants, synthetic skin, scalpels, medical laboratory diagnostic instruments and test kits for diagnosis.
Under the Food and Drugs Act, Health Canada defines a device as "any article, instrument, apparatus or contrivance, including any component, part or accessory thereof, manufactured, sold or represented for use in
- diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of a disease, disorder or abnormal physical state, or its symptoms, in human beings or animals,
- storing, correcting or modifying a body function or the body structure of human beings or animals;
- the diagnosis of pregnancy in human beings or animals, or
- the care of human beings or animals during pregnancy and at and after birth of the offspring, including care of the offspring;
and includes a contraceptive device but does not include a drug."
