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 # EUDAMED API Reference (unofficial)
+
+Unofficial API reference for EUDAMED, the European database of medical devices.
+
+[View the API reference here.][html]
+
+## Rationale
+
+The introduction of a unified database for medical devices across all European countries is a good idea - it
+creates transparency, collects all data in one place and reduces overhead as each country no longer has to
+maintain their own infrastructure.
+
+Well, that's the theory.
+
+Unfortunately, EUDAMED has, politely speaking, not really delivered upon those promises. Its user experience
+is somewhere between "huh, this feels like Windows 95" and "I'm throwing my computer out of the window
+now". Running a search easily takes 5 - 10 seconds. You can't right-click on links (?), so good luck managing
+your research in multiple tabs (you can't).
+
+It's the best example of what happens when you develop "software by committee".
+
+And it's not even feature-complete. Its timeline for completion has been postponed multiple times. It's still
+being developed as we speak.
+
+This is saddening to see, because it hampers innovation and makes people unhappy: Every minute in the EU,
+there's probably a person wrestling with EUDAMED and throwing their hands up into the air (or their computer
+out of the window).
+
+Not every regulator is bad at writing software: In the US, the FDA has launched a project called
+[openFDA][openfda] which provides both a simple API to access data, and machine-readable data dumps of all
+data for offline processing. It's very cool.
+
+Now, what to do in the EU?
+
+The EU is not really delivering (at least before 2027, see below), but we can do some things about this.
+
+We aim to achieve two things:
+
+1. Build a better Eudamed search engine so that EU medical device innovation is no longer hampered by terrible
+   software.
+2. Create transparency about APIs, so that others can hook into the data and contribute.
+
+Goal #1 is solved by [BEUDAMED][beudamed], or "[Better EUDAMED][beudamed]", which we developed. It provides a
+much better user experience for searching across the EUDAMED data (think of it like Google Scholar
+vs. Pubmed).
+
+Goal #2 is solved by this repository. While building BEUDAMED, we learned a lot about the EUDAMED API and data
+structure (spoiler: it's a mess), so we've summarized all our learnings here and hope that other people will
+contribute.
+
+Maybe that will enable other developers to build useful software on top of EUDAMED in the future.
+
+You still have ample time: EUDAMED is only planned to be complete by 2027. The timeline was moved most
+recently in July 2024.
+
+## Contributing
+
+You can view the API definition (which is a yml file) [here][yml]. The most straightforward way to edit it is
+to copy-paste its content into the [Swagger Editor][swagger-editor] (or the newer [Swagger Editor
+Next][swagger-editor-next], no clue which one is better).
+
+Based on the yml file, this GitHub repository builds a HTML file with [redocly-cli][redocly-cli] and pushes it
+to the [GitHub pages site][html].
+
+Open a pull request if you'd like to propose changes.
+
+## OpenRegulatory
+
+Hold on, who the hell are we?
+
+We're [OpenRegulatory][openregulatory], and it's our mission to enable for medical device innovation by making
+it much easier, affordable and transparent to comply with medical device regulations.
+
+For that purpose, we've published all our [MDR / ISO 13485 templates for free][templates] (also on
+[GitHub][templates-github]). And we've built a [QMS Software][formwork] which enables lean, founder-led
+Healthcare startups (like yours?) to enter the market faster, because a lot of the regulatory documentation
+gets automated by it.
+
+That's it. Have a nice day!
+
+.. and I hope browsing the EUDAMED API documentation is less painful for you than it was for me when I was
+writing it. Because it's truly a mess.
+
+
+<!-- Links -->
+
+[html]: https://openregulatory.github.io/eudamed-api/
+[openfda]: https://open.fda.gov
+[beudamed]: https://beudamed.com
+[yml]: eudamed_api_openapi_3_1.yml
+[swagger-editor]: https://editor.swagger.io
+[swagger-editor-next]: https://editor-next.swagger.io
+[redocly-cli]: https://redocly.com/docs/cli
+[openregulatory]: https://openregulatory.com
+[templates]: https://openregulatory.com/templates
+[templates-github]: https://github.com/openregulatory/templates
+[formwork]: https://openregulatory.com/formwork