The U.S. FDA’s safer technologies program, or STeP, is designed in part as a complement to the breakthrough devices program, but the September 2019 draft guidance lent little clarity as to what might constitute a significantly safer device. The Jan. 5, 2021, final guidance does little to clarify that question, however.
As might be expected, device makers have a lot of nice things to say about a recent proposal by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to automatically cover technologies designated as breakthrough devices by the FDA. However, two trade associations and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) all expressed serious misgivings about a proposal to define the term “reasonable and necessary” as possibly contingent on private payer coverage.
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting medical devices and technologies, including: Federal Circuit declines to overturn lower court ruling for Medtronic; FDA stands pat on biotin interference threshold in final guidance; CMS adds to telehealth list.
COVID-19 has prompted dramatic rethinking of supply chains, health care delivery, regulations, and collaboration that are likely to permanently restructure the med-tech industry, according to industry leaders speaking at a panel during the Advanced Medical Technology Association’s (Advamed) Virtual Medtech Conference on Oct. 6. In addition, the significant increase in debt and strong fundamentals position the industry for a burst of M&A activity.
The annual med-tech conference hosted by the Advanced Medical Technology Association, always features an FDA town hall, but this year’s town hall labored under the overhang of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, Jeff Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), repeatedly gave voice to frustration with the statutory authorities currently enjoyed by the center, stating on more than one occasion that the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 are more than 40 years old and are in need of updates to cope with modern medical technology.
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is stretching the boundaries of conventional med-tech regulation, and several regulatory agencies are working to cut that Gordian knot. Marc Lamoureaux, director of digital health at Health Canada’s (HC) medical device directorate, said on a Sept. 21 webinar that legislation passed in 2019 gives the agency a “regulatory sandbox” in which to experiment with AI regulation, a mechanism he said may bring these algorithms to market much more rapidly than would otherwise be the case.
Don May, Advamed’s executive vice president for payment and health care policy, said on a Sept. 11 press briefing that any device that misses its first year of new technology add-on payment (NTAP) eligibility may not be able to recover that year unless CMS makes an exception for the pandemic, seemingly leaving the Boston Scientific Eluvia device with only two years of eligibility for its NTAP application.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has moved incrementally to date on the Medicare inpatient-only (IPO) list for a number of procedures, but the agency recently proposed to eliminate the IPO list altogether by 2024. The Advanced Medical Technology Association (Advamed) cautioned that the elimination of the entire IPO list should at the least be accompanied by a monitoring of outcomes to ensure that quality of the services is not affected, but also said the translation of payment codes for outpatient performance of these procedures might lead to inadequate reimbursement rates.
The U.S. FDA has nudged the emergency use authorization (EUA) program forward once again, this time with a template for applications for tests that can be performed entirely at home, in the office and at schools. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in an accompanying statement that tests of this sort “will be a game-changer in our fight against COVID-19 and will be crucial as the nation looks toward reopening.”
The U.S. FDA has a number of draft guidances in queue thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but released two final guidances in mid-July, including the guidance for clinical investigations for prostate tissue ablation devices. Stakeholders pressed the agency to avoid a fixed period of follow-up for such studies due to variability in the elapsed time for device-related adverse events, but the agency stuck to the draft’s mandate for at least a year of follow-up.
