Right on cue, the U.S. FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is scheduling its first in-person advisory committee meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking during a May 6 webinar hosted by the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, CDER Director Patrizia Cavazzoni said the center was preparing to go back to in-person adcoms, adding that the first step likely would be a hybrid model.
Right on cue, the U.S. FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is scheduling its first in-person advisory committee meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking during a May 6 webinar hosted by the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, CDER Director Patrizia Cavazzoni said the center was preparing to go back to in-person adcoms, adding that the first step likely would be a hybrid model.
It’s no surprise to hear that industry’s view of a device’s inherent risk differs from that of the U.S. FDA, a disparity that came to surface in a new citizen petition from Metaltronica SpA of Pomezia, Italy. The company petitioned the agency to down-classify digital breast tomosynthesis system to class II, a move that would align the risk classification with full-field digital mammography and ease the premarket path for future digital breast tomosynthesis applications.
The U.S. FDA has proposed an update to an existing program for user fee reductions for companies grossing less than $100 million, although this latest update is much stingier than that. The update would provide registration fee relief for entities with revenues of $1 million or less, but only if that business is in bankruptcy proceedings, a meager bit of relief considering that registration fees in fiscal 2024 run to less than $7,700.
After nearly a decade and a half of service at the U.S. FDA, Bill Maisel will retire from the agency, taking with him a wealth of experience as both a physician and a regulator. The agency said Owen Faris, also a long-time member of the FDA staff, will take Maisel’s place as the director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality (OPEQ), but this is a temporary stint for Faris as the agency will conduct a search for Maisel’s replacement.
The U.S. FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health is no stranger to controversy, but the final guidance for clinical decision support (CDS) systems seems to have broken new ground in this regard.
The FDA town hall on the final day of the 2023 edition of the Med Tech Conference included the usual patter about the achievements at the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), but a few useful nuggets of information nonetheless slipped through in this year’s session. CDRH director Jeff Shuren acknowledged that the agency is steering device advisory committee hearings away from votes on whether to approve a product, an approach he said is under consideration at the agency’s other product centers as well.
The U.S. FDA has been working for some time to develop less clunky regulatory mechanisms for digital health products, but Jeff Shuren, director of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, has been touting a voluntary alternative pathway (VAP) as a modernized approach to premarket review.
The U.S. FDA’s December 2022 draft guidance for human factors (HF) information in medical device premarket filings is a complete do-over of a previous draft guidance from 2016, but the reaction from industry has been anything but cheerful. Several observers, including the Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA), hammered the new draft guidance for its introduction of the concept of a critical task due to the expansive effect that would have on the need for human factors studies for medical devices.
Innovative medical devices are the norm for reviewers at the U.S. FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), but regulatory innovation is a tougher climb. In response, CDRH director Jeff Shuren said at this year’s Medtech Conference in Boston that the agency is eyeing a voluntary alternative pathway (VAP) for novel digital technologies, although this concept is unlikely to see the regulatory light of day other than as a pilot program at any point in the next year or two, given the need for statutory authorization.
