In a potential breakthrough for diagnosis and treatment development of liver disease, the Biomarkers Consortium’s Noninvasive Biomarkers of Metabolic Liver Disease (NIMBLE) project demonstrated that a blood test could diagnose nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an increasingly common liver disease in the U.S. The study, published in Nature Medicine, identified four biomarkers that outperform current liquid biopsies for NASH.
Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) for medical devices does not present the same policy footprint as DTC ads for drugs, but Congress recently asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate device advertising to evaluate whether reforms are needed. GAO responded to the effect that while the literature lacks any useful studies on the question, some stakeholders believe that DTC device ads give short shrift to risk information, a finding that may prompt Congress to enact new legislation on the question.
Japan’s Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) has jumped on board the e-consent train for clinical trials, publishing a guidance for the use of electronic means for obtaining a study participant’s informed consent.
Amsterdam-based Royal Philips NV reported that it has come to terms with customers and end users of its respiratory equipment to the tune of $479 million, which will reimburse for the cost of these systems. The problem for the company is that the settlement does not affect any personal injury cases, and thus represents only a partial closure of a controversy that has dogged the company for several years.
The U.S. FDA’s concerns about the 510(k) program over the past decade-plus are practically the stuff of regulatory urban legend, but the agency has just unveiled a trio of draft guidances to address some of those concerns. Perhaps the most significant of these is a draft guidance for selection of a predicate device for a 510(k) filing, a document that may come across to industry as little more than an attempt to limit the devices that a manufacturer can recite in a 510(k) filing.
The U.S. FDA recently posted another round of recalls for the Cardiosave line of intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABPs) by Datascope Corp., advising users to make sure they have a backup unit at the ready in the case of device failure. However, the agency noted that “alternative treatments are limited,” a clear sign that this market lacks competition, most likely due to a lack of incentives for the private sector to invest in this class of devices.
U.S. federal preemption of state liability law for medical devices is firmly established for PMA devices, but this is not the case for devices that are cleared via the U.S. FDA‘s 510(k) program. However, some courts have gone a step further in disallowing defendants in product liability litigation from entering evidence of 510(k) clearances from the FDA, a practice that played a role in a $3.3 million verdict against Murray Hill, N.J.-based C.R. Bard Inc. that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decreed is not eligible for a new trial.
Some U.S. FDA inspections go better than other ones, but the agency’s inspection of the Boston plant operated by a subsidiary of Princeton, N.J.-based Integra Lifesiences Holding Corp. was not one of those with a quick resolution. The agency said in a July 17 warning letter that Integra will have to obtain certification for the site in each of the next three years after finding considerable fault with operations, including one citation the agency said is a carryover from a warning letter issued in 2019.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) might not be the talk of the town in the world of cardiology medical devices, but the condition has a devastating effect on a large number of lives, particularly in the case of early disease onset. San Francisco-based Viz.ai Inc. has won a de novo from the U.S. FDA for its algorithm for identification of patients at risk of HCM, the aptly named Viz HCM, a product the company believes will not only save lives but may save the U.S. health care system a large amount of money as well.
The U.S. FDA’s position on predetermined change control protocols (PCCPs) is still in draft form, even though at least one company has won a marketing authorization with a PCCP attached to the underlying artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. While the agency is still on the fence about a PCCP that incorporates a potential change in the indication for use, regulatory attorney Brigid DeCoursey Bondoc told BioWorld that industry should not reflexively avoid proposing a PCCP with a such change so long as the proposal includes answers to the questions the FDA is sure to ask.
