The number 23 is an interesting number. It’s a prime number, and is the number of pairs of chromosomes in human DNA, but it may also become a number FDA won’t soon forget. FDA recently issued a warning letter to 23andMe, ordering the company to stop offering its gene testing service pending further evaluations of the tests. Then a petition popped up at the website for the White House to require FDA to back off. The petitioners argue the agency “grossly overstates the risks” associated with the test, adding that consumers understand those risks. I won’t pretend to know what...

The MedTech Investing Conference held each May in Minneapolis is one of the more interesting investor-focused gatherings on the calendar. It always earns accolades from attendees as representing one of the best opportunities to bring together venture capitalists, entrepreneur/innovators and corporate development types, the latter of whom are always happy to spread the message that they’re open for business. Held for the 12th year earlier this month, the conference offered quite the reminder of the range of emotions being felt these days by those involved with or interested in med-tech. During his welcoming comments, conference co-chairman Kevin Wasserstein, founder and principal...

In a recent issue of Medical Device Daily, Integrity Life Sciences (ILS; Tampa) reported that FDA will investigate the use of robotic surgery, a move said to be sparked by a tripling of adverse events reports between 2008 and 2012. The company statement indicates that the more than 1,400 U.S. hospitals deploying surgical robots have filed enough reports to render a report rate that is a "higher than acceptable rate," although the announcement acknowledges that the data do not clearly disclose whether "the failure is attributable to the robot itself, operator error, the FDA marketing clearance process, or the training...

Charles Dickens at his desk in 1858. Dickens' famous opening line from "A Tale of Two Cities" could easily be applied to the current state of the medical device industry, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Here at Medical Device Daily we've become accustomed to the doom-and-gloom stories about our industry. The medical device tax provision in the Affordable Care Act and other emerging realities of healthcare reform along with worldwide economic sluggishness, regulatory and reimbursement challenges, consolidation among hospitals and an increase in hospital-employed physicians has created the perfect storm for the medical device industry....

ATLANTA - With a substantially strong turnout the Southeastern Medical Device Association (SEMDA) kicked off its 2013 conference earlier today. Hosted at the Georgia Institute of Technology Global Learning Center, the organization's annual conference featured speakers ranging from Medical Device Manufacturers Association President/CEO Mark Leahey to Jeff Shuren, MD, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (even though he was speaking from an offsite location). SEMDA seemed to have its finger on the pulse of med-tech firms' concerns even more so than last year. As in past years the themes seemed to center around dealing with strained funding...

There’s a lot of consternation and maybe even a little constipation of late about the U.S. federal budget, and rightly so. If the White House and Congress can’t come to some resolution about budget sequestration, the FDA budget could tighten enough that user fees would disappear, which would cripple the agency. Complicating matters further is the series of tax issues – a convergence dubbed the fiscal cliff – that ripen at the end of this year, giving everyone inside the Beltway more to worry about. This is all difficult enough without an election, so it’s easy to be pessimistic. And...

By Kelly Roman, Vice President of Fisher Wallace Labs On February 10, 2012, the FDA convened an advisory panel hearing on whether to reclassify cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) devices. Despite being a low-risk device, CES has lingered in Class 3 (high risk) for more than 30 years as a result of being a grandfathered 510(k) medical device. The regulatory fate of CES, which is currently cleared to treat depression, anxiety and insomnia, will emerge at a time when antidepressants have been proven ineffective in treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress; CES has had great success treating this population. CES manufacturers such...

The demise of the Global Harmonization Task Force as a regulator-plus-industry forum for harmonization – or “convergence,” as the cautiously optimistic like to say – was met with little more than silence from the trade associations, but one can be sure the off-the-record discussions were intense. Now with the International Medical Device Regulators Forum coming together, the time has come to ask what the future of international medical device regulation holds. First let’s examine the obvious. The chatter about demonstrations of efficacy as a requirement for a CE mark has been going on for some time, and the flap over...

No doubt some are tired of hearing me go on about the FDA budget, but industry thinks the agency is under-funded, too. Most who are part of this discussion believe FDA would be more functional with appropriate appropriations, but they ignore the dynamic necessary to fully fund FDA. Hence, the dysfunction persists. To wit: Dealing with FDA’s public affairs staff is typically not a bad experience unless they have to consult with others at the agency on fairly detailed matters. For instance, I’d written last year about a Federal Register notice addressing pre-emption of state law with regard to the...