Cochlear Ltd. heard good news from the U.S. FDA, as the agency approved its next-generation cochlear implant, the Nucleus Nexa System, the first smart cochlear implant system. Cochlear expects to launch the new products in the U.S. in the next few months, Brendan Murray, vice president for Cochlear Implant products portfolio and strategy told BioWorld.

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends the use of pulsed field ablation as an option to treat NHS patients with atrial fibrillation. NICE said evidence shows the procedure reduces atrial fibrillation and its symptoms, increases quality of life in the short term and raises no major safety concerns.

The med tech patent wars opened a new front in the region of screening tests for colorectal cancer, pitting Exact Sciences Corp., of Madison, Wisc., against St. Louis-based Geneoscopy Inc.

The next FDA device user fee agreement is formally in negotiations but a recent agency report shows device makers are increasingly keen to interact with FDA reviewers. This is a fact that may make it difficult to keep the next user fee schedule from increasing dramatically over the current agreement.

The U.S. FDA noted in a series of Federal Register declarations that several device makers are working with the Patent and Trademark Office to claim regulatory review times for their devices, including the Sapien 3 Ultra Resilia device by Edwards Lifesciences Corp.

With the June 9 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee party-line vote of 12-11, Susan Monarez’s nomination is headed to the Senate floor where she could become the first CDC director to go through the confirmation process. That’s thanks to a provision in the bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act that was signed into law in 2022.

Insightec Ltd. received U.S. FDA approval for use of its Exablate Neuro device to address severe motor symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease, offering a new option for patients who have not found adequate relief from medications. Exablate Neuro uses focused ultrasound to create lesions in the brain without requiring an incision or implant.

Patent reform in the U.S. revolves largely around the subject matter eligibility question, but Congress is reluctant to intervene – a predicament addressed recently by Andrei Iancu, formerly the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicated it will act on a previous proposal to terminate the Treatment Choices Model for ESRD at the end of the current calendar year because of a failure of the program to deliver on the promised efficiencies and improvement in outcomes.

Representatives of patients’ groups, industry bodies and venture philanthropy funders are calling for a renewal of the U.K. Rare Diseases Framework, to put fresh momentum behind translational research and clinical trials, streamline regulatory oversight and improve access to therapies.