Artificial intelligence (AI) faces a number of interesting hurdles in the EU, such as the still-developing Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), which seems destined to treat health care uses as high-risk propositions. Corinne Dive-Reclus, director of global lab insights at Roche Diagnostics, said there are possible solutions, such as overwriting the AI Act’s risk classifications with the risk category provided by existing regulations, but there is an open question as to whether a fix will be in place to prevent a potentially disastrous risk framework for AI in health care.
The U.S FDA 510(k) clearance for Corneat Vision Ltd.’s Everpatch is a “safety stamp” for the product, and the “first step’ in the deployment of Corneat’s synthetic tissue substitute technology, which could displace the use of donor and processed tissue, Almog Aley-Raz, CEO of Corneat, told BioWorld. The Corneat Everpatch, for use in ophthalmic surgeries, is the first non-degradable material that seamlessly embeds itself with surrounding tissue avoiding foreign body response often triggered by implanted devices, Aley-Raz claimed.
Whoever said beauty is only skin deep hasn’t looked below to see what Sientra Inc. has made available there recently. The medical aesthetics company now boasts the only tissue expander cleared in the U.S. for exposure to magnetic resonance imaging, an important screening tool for breast reconstruction patients. Sientra’s CTO Denise Dajles told BioWorld the newly cleared Allox2 Pro Tissue Expander builds on the original expander also cleared by the FDA. “No other expander in the market has an MRI compatibility indication because they are based on a metal, i.e., metallic ports and big magnets in them,” Dajles explained.
General Stim Inc.’s implanted sacral nerve stimulation (SNS) system was approved in China to treat individuals with certain bladder and bowel conditions. Hangzhou-based General Stim’s SNS system consists of a sacral nerve stimulator, an extension lead and an electrode.
The U.S. FDA’s citizen’s petition process doesn’t always yield the desired outcome, but the agency must nonetheless respond to these petitions. Sonex Health Inc., has petitioned the FDA to rethink a proposal to reclassify the company’s SX-One device for treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome, an unusual instance in which a medical device maker has resisted a proposal to make a device exempt from regulatory requirements.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Cutera, Vielight.
The French government is officially launching a major national program for digital health. This priority research program and equipment (PEPR) in digital health is being piloted by two major government research bodies, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA). It has a budget of $65 million over seven years
A committee of the U.S. House of Representatives wrapped up business in a late-running June 14 markup of spending bills that would give the U.S. FDA roughly $6.6 billion to work with in fiscal 2024. However, the final bill omits language in the manager’s mark that had called on the FDA to engage in rulemaking or guidance development for lab-developed tests, but the FDA made up for that by adding a proposal to engage in rulemaking for LDTs in its regulatory agenda.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Apyx, Futura, Gencurix.
Negotiations over the text of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) are drawing to a close, but stakeholders are concerned about several key aspects of the legislation, such as how the term “artificial intelligence” is defined. However, Medtech Europe and other groups, including medical professional societies, are also concerned that the provisions for governance of data would seem to exclude real-world data as a source of evidence, an oversight they say will diminish the utility of AI software in health care.