OREANDA-NEWS. October 02, 2014. McKesson’s Cardiology Development group in Tel Aviv has successfully achieved a CMMI® (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Maturity Level 5 rating. The development group is the only listed, FDA-regulated medical device software group to achieve the CMMI Institute’s highest rating?.

The CMMI framework is a world-wide industry measure to help organizations put systems into place that link management and engineering best practices to business objectives, to help them improve the quality, predictability and delivery of their products and services.

There are five stages of CMMI maturity. While these levels are used as benchmarks to gauge progression, the goal of CMMI is more than simply achieving check marks at each level; it is to achieve value-added business improvement. The cardiology development group attained the highest level of achievement.

Medical devices are the most highly regulated products on the market. McKesson’s Cardiology products are sold in many different markets in Europe and America, so they must conform to many different regulations.

“Attaining this level of development capability and maturity is a powerful indicator of the depth and rigor of McKesson Cardiology’s approach to producing world-class software,” says Randy Spratt, chief information officer and chief technology officer, McKesson.

Commitment to quality improvement
Though complying with CMMI methodology requires significant time and effort, the Cardiology Development group realized that implementing it would be an opportunity to make changes that would help align business and development goals and improve the quality of the products they deliver.

The Development group’s achievement is partly due to its culture. Hillel Glazer, CMMI lead appraiser and Enterprise Lean|Agile coach, says he was very impressed with the team: “They were very prepared and organized. It was evident that their efforts were honestly aimed at improving performance and not at reaching CMMI levels superficially.”

“This achievement is a testament to the strong culture of performance improvement across the entire Tel Aviv organization,” added Jim Shaver, senior director, Enterprise Quality Improvement at McKesson. “The group is passionate about what they do and recognize that it directly impacts lives. They did not set out to achieve CMMI Level 5; they wanted to do their jobs more efficiently and make sure they were delivering the best possible product to their customers.”

The CMMI focus included all functions of the development organization, including product management and tactical development. The key to achieving best results was to implement improved processes along the entire continuum of the development life cycle.

Quality results
Choosing to use the CMMI methodology has given McKesson’s Cardiology Development group the ability to improve processes and deliver quality while retaining a commitment to innovation. The group recently developed a progressive mobile app that enables cardiologists to view electrocardiograms from an iPad®, which the FDA has approved as a medical device.

Climbing the CMMI ladder is a demanding endeavor requiring absolute dedication to quality improvement and it has had a significant impact on business.

“Overall, these process improvements have helped us get to a place where we are able to produce better products that are better tuned to our customers’ needs and of higher quality than ever before,” says Tomer Levy, vice president engineering for McKesson Cardiology Development.