The U.S. FDA’s device center has at times struggled to make the volume of hires under the reigning Medical Device User Fee Agreement (MDUFA), but that wasn’t a problem in fiscal year 2023.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced a conviction obtained in federal court of an employee of a medical device manufacturer who was charged with forging documents that purported that his employer had obtained clearance for two medical devices. Peter Stoll III, who was employed by Aesculap Inc., of Center Valley, Pa., will serve 12 months in prison and a year of supervised release in one of the most egregious examples of fraudulent med tech behavior in recent memory.

Carl Zeiss Meditec AG recently received U.S. FDA clearance for the latest generation of its femtosecond laser, the Visumax 800, with its Smile pro software, for surgically treating nearsightedness, with or without astigmatism.

The European Commission (EC) has proposed another delay in the compliance deadlines for the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) that eases the existing timelines by roughly two and a half years. The news was welcomed by Medtech Europe, which nonetheless pressed the EC and others to patch up some of the issues that led to the new extensions in the first place.

The U.S. FDA is undergoing a significant overhaul of operations which is designed in part to make the agency’s Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) more efficient and less obtrusive to product centers, such as the Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

B-rayz AG received CE mark for its Data Adaptive Neural Artificial Intelligence (DANAI) technology that helps clinicians with breast cancer detection. The company hopes that DANAI, which introduces a custom AI-based framework that can adapt to clinicians needs and grow smarter in the process, will revolutionize the diagnostic landscape for breast imaging and transform the lives of millions of women.

Is it an unconstitutional taking when U.S. FDA reviewers disclose a brand company’s claimed trade secrets or confidential commercial information to would-be competitors? That’s a question the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has yet to answer. While the court dismissed some of Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s claims against the FDA, its Jan. 18 opinion left open the debate of whether such disclosures, intentional or inadvertent, are a per se or regulatory taking.

The U.S. Congress has passed a continuing resolution (CR) for the fiscal 2024 budget, an exercise that has become all too common as a substitute for a full suite of spending bills in an era of growing deficits.

One of the more significant enforcement actions to date in 2024 is the $13 million hit taken by the owner of a clinical lab in New Jersey for allegations of payment of kickbacks for unnecessary testing, suggesting that this new year will be a robust one for federal fraud enforcement in the U.S.