The fifth medical device user fee agreement (MDUFA V) is a generous bump in monies for the U.S. FDA, some of which will go toward advancing the use of real-world evidence (RWE) in the agency’s regulatory decisions. The FDA just opened a docket for comment on how those monies might be doled out to entities other than the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC), an expansion that might nudge the regulatory science along a little more quickly and thus enhance the use of RWE for premarket submissions.
Magstim Inc. received U.S. FDA clearance for use of its Horizon 3.0 and E-z Cool Coil to treat adult patients diagnosed with both obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). The company’s non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy offers an option for patients who do not find adequate relief from the often life-disrupting symptoms of OCD with exposure therapy or medication.
The new year always brings with it a series of New Year’s resolutions, and the U.S. FDA has apparently resolved to catch up on its backlog of de novo notifications. The earlier of the two de novo regulatory announcements is for a digital product by Minneapolis-based Nightware Inc., and its namesake kit for reduction of sleep disturbances, a regulation that arrives more than two years after the product was granted market access.
The U.S. FDA has given the green light to Abbott Laboratories Inc. for its Navitor next-generation transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) system for the treatment of patients with aortic valve stenosis who are at increased risk of open-heart surgery. Abbott won European approval of Navitor in May 2021.
After years of negotiations, the U.S. FDA and Swissmedic are one step away from recognizing each other’s good manufacturing practice (GMP) inspections of biopharma facilities.
Given the advances being made in cancer treatments, it’s time to move beyond the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) to dose-optimization trials for targeted therapies, the U.S. FDA said in a new draft guidance.
The U.S. FDA and Health Canada announced that they will roll out a pilot program that allows a medical device manufacturer to submit a medical device application to both agencies simultaneously for class II and class III medical devices.
The U.S. FDA’s 510(k) program is yet again under assault, this time from the authors of a Jan. 10 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The authors’ primary point seems to be that any 510(k) devices that recite a predicate that is the subject of at least three recalls are themselves more likely than average to be the subject of a recall, although there was no discernible association between recall status and technological differences between the predicate and the follow-on devices.
The U.S. FDA’s surveillance of endoscopes related to reprocessing issues has yielded two more warning letters, one each for Tokyo-based Olympus Medical and its Aizu Olympus subsidiary, both of which were cited for inadequate procedures for medical device reports (MDRs).
