For medical devices, the list of which is set by order of the Minister for Health on a proposal from the Director General of the Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé (French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products), material vigilance includes traceability rules from the time the medical devices are received in the healthcare or cosmetic surgery facility where they are to be used, until the time they are used on the patient.
The purpose of these rules is to enable rapid identification of :
1° The patients for whom the medical devices in a batch have been used ;
2° The batches from which the medical devices used on a patient originate.