Pick the wrong EMDN code and your device is still registered, still compliant, and effectively invisible to anyone searching EUDAMED for what you actually make. That is the practical reason the Commission keeps running training on it, and on 3 August 2026 it published the videos from the third round.
The first training ran in 2024, the second in 2025. The audience is the people who do registrations rather than the people who write strategy, which is the right target: this is a data-entry decision with market-visibility consequences.
Why the codes feel Italian
Because they are. Rather than build a nomenclature from scratch, the Commission adopted the Italian Classificazione Nazionale Dispositivi medici as the basis for the EMDN, following criteria and orientations set by the MDCG. Anyone who has wondered why a branch of the tree splits the way it does has found the answer.
It moves every year
Since the 2021 release the EMDN has been updated annually, through public consultation on the EMDN submission platform, under the procedure in MDCG 2024-2 rev.1. Releases are named by year, v.2024 and v.2025 and so on, and the one that counts is whichever version is currently integrated into EUDAMED.
That annual drift is easy to miss and awkward in practice. Registrations made under an older release sit in the same database as newer ones, so anyone analysing EUDAMED at scale, including competent authorities, is reading across versions whether they realise it or not. Our EUDAMED search queries the live database if you want to see what is actually in there against your own codes.
The nomenclature is free to everyone, downloadable as Excel, with a helpdesk and a published Q and A. The Commission is explicit that it is not only for manufacturers: patients, hospitals, pharmacies, practitioners and researchers are all named users. Details on the Commission’s EMDN page.