The new draft guidance for clinical decision support (CDS) software is in part a response to the 21st Century Cures Act, and the FDA Bakul Patel said on a Nov. 4 webinar, "we heard the feedback loud and clear" on the previous draft, and thus the agency must "get this policy to a place where it balances patient safety" and the need to avoid unnecessary roadblocks between developers and the market.
The U.S. FDA's overhaul of the 510(k) program continues apace with the recent final guidance for the special 510(k) mechanism. However, a member of the FDA staff said clerical errors account for a conspicuous number of conversions of these applications to traditional 510(k)s than any other problem. The agency posted the final guidance for the special 510(k) program in September with features seen in the draft that drew opposition from device makers.
The FDA's guidance for uncertainty of benefit-risk provided some clarity on the benefit-risk question, but the terms of the "uncertainty" guidance could apply to the agency's Safer Technologies Program (STeP) despite that the STeP program applies to 510(k) devices, which are excluded from the scope of the uncertainty guidance.
The U.S. FDA's draft guidance for labeling and patient information for breast implants addresses concerns over anaplastic large cell lymphoma, but the draft also recommends biennial examination via ultrasound or MRI after five years, a recommendation that could prove a boon to makers of these imaging systems.
The FDA's September 2019 final guidance for the humanitarian device exemption program brought some clarity to several issues, but device makers must still untangle the question of which tasks an institutional review board (IRB) has delegated to an appropriate local committee for a specific clinical site.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. FDA's 2018 final guidance for payer communications widely was seen as long overdue upon delivery. For his part, Paul Savidge, U.S. general counsel at Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics Inc., said his company's development of the required information for such communication was "a massive undertaking" that proved useful a second time when it came to promoting its product after FDA approval.
The U.S. FDA has posted its guidance agenda for this still-young fiscal year (FY), a list that covers topics such as Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments (CLIA) waivers. However, the agency appears to be concerned about a lack of compliance with Section 522 postmarket surveillance studies, as indicated by the inclusion of the related guidance in the high priority list for do-overs in fiscal 2020.
BOSTON – The FDA's Center for Device and Radiological Health (CDRH) released draft guidance on Monday aimed at encouraging the use of patient input in medical device clinical trials and helping sponsors understand how they can use patient engagement to improve the design and conduct of investigations.
The FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health has released yet another draft guidance dealing with medical device premarket programs with the release of a draft guidance for the accreditation scheme for conformity assessment. The draft frequently references independent standards for assessing device performance and safety, thus bringing regulatory harmonization one step closer to a practicable reality.
