A Hazard-Based Approach to Product Safety Assessment

The principle of safety standards is to protect users from injury or death caused by electrical shock, chemical exposure, fire, and radiation, to name a few. There are numerous national and international standards that include safety specifications to guide the design and manufacture of safe products. In this paper, we discuss a new standard IEC 62368-1 that keeps pace with new products and emerging technology while accommodating legacy components. The intent of this standard is to identify potential safety hazards during the design stage to enable better control and mitigation of foreseeable risks. Although this standard is practical in the way that it addresses hazard-based safety design, it does not preclude a complete durability and performance testing to evaluate a product.