Challenges

Regulatory requirements, limited scope to test User Interfaces (UIs) remotely, time to market

Operating in a highly-regulated industry, all technical documentation had to comply with Medical Device Regulations, and localization Documents of Conformity would be required to confirm adherence to agreed standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Localization of RDT’s Tempus Pro device and accompanying documentation was driven by customer orders in the relevant territory. This presented the challenge of how to achieve tight time-to-market deadlines whilst ensuring high-quality localization.

In addition, all UI testing had previously taken place in-house on the Tempus Pro device. To scale up and allow linguistic testing, an offline solution was required.

Solution

An integrated technical communication and product localization strategy

The 3di team:

• Provided initial technical authoring consultancy to migrate the user documentation to MadCap Flare to enable faster and more accurate documentation updates.
• Recruited a technical author to work in-house at RDT to handle day-to-day documentation requirements.
• Developed clear SOPs for UI and documentation localization to meet stringent regulatory requirements.
• Established a strategy to reduce time-to-market by first localizing the Tempus Pro UI followed by the technical documentation while internal software testing was carried out.
• Set up specialist teams of translators, highly skilled in translating medical device UIs and documentation, and also able to provide linguistic testing via a simulator.
• Created, aligned and managed Translation Memories (TMs) for each language, across content types.
• Provided a flexible and scalable localization service, responding to RDT’s product development cycles.