Inspan LLC has won FDA 510(k) clearance for an interspinous fixation system that can now be used to treat lumbar spinal stenosis in non-cervical spine cases of spondylolisthesis, trauma, tumor and degenerative disc disease. According to Aditya Humad, co-founder and CFO of Kicventures Group which counts Inspan among its portfolio companies, FDA clearance represents an expansion in the use of Inspan’s interspinous system into the “highly competitive space” of interventional pain management.

Applaud Medical Inc. has secured breakthrough device designation from the FDA for its acoustic enhancer technology to be used in conjunction with ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy (URS-LL) for the fragmentation of calcium-based urinary stones. The San Francisco-based company is currently enrolling subjects in an FDA-approved pivotal trial evaluating the technology’s safety and efficacy.

U.S. FDA regulation of combination products has always been complicated, and a new final guidance takes up the long-standing controversy over FDA review of these applications. The final guidance makes explicit the possibility that the individual components of a cross-labeled combination product will be reviewed separately, a concession that industry saw as critical to ensure that these applications can make it through the FDA gauntlet without undue delay.

The quinquennial user fee process for medical devices has always proven controversial, but the FDA and industry have missed a Jan. 15 deadline for an agreement to be presented to Congress. Recently, several members of the House and Senate inked a letter to the FDA about the missed deadline, a signal that the agency’s aspirations for a $2.5 billion user fee deal are in jeopardy.

Insulet Corp. received FDA clearance for its Omnipod 5 closed-loop automated insulin delivery (AID) system for patients aged six and older who have type 1 diabetes on Friday, Jan. 28, making it the first tubeless “artificial pancreas” system to get the FDA greenlight. The Omnipod 5 works with Dexcom Inc.’s widely used G6 continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to self-adjust insulin dosing using its Smartadjust algorithm.

The U.S. FDA often has difficulty turning around draft guidances into final guidances in a timely manner, but that hasn’t impeded the agency’s appetite for fast turnaround of industry responses to FDA mandated postmarket surveillance studies. Nonetheless, the Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA) said in comments to the docket for the May 2021 draft guidance for Section 522 postmarket surveillance studies that a requirement that such a study be fully enrolled within 24 months should be aspirational rather than compulsory.

The FDA’s device center has published two guidances dealing with patient engagement in relation to the conduct of clinical trials, including a final guidance for patient input into clinical trial design. The final guidance is mum, however, as to whether consultations with patient representatives constitutes a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), a predicament the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) said may represent a serious legal hazard for device makers.

Neurometrix Inc. secured breakthrough device designation from the FDA for its Quell technology for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) just six months after receiving the designation for fibromyalgia in July 2021. Quell is a wearable, credit card-sized transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device worn on the upper calf that delivers self-adjusting, high-power nerve stimulation that disrupts pain signals sent to the brain.