The U.K. Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency provided an update of its guidance for clinical investigations for medical devices and is offering a temporary waiver of the fees for registration of clinical studies to small manufacturers.

The COVID-19 pandemic amplified concerns over medical device shortages, prompting the U.S. FDA to develop guidance on the topic in November 2023. Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration is eyeing a guidance to address the very same problem, although the agency seems wary of whether to formally develop a guidance on device shortages.

Generative AI has largely escaped the U.S. FDA’s regulatory purview up to now, but OpenAI seems poised to create a new source of regulatory angst for the agency. The company unveiled its ChatGPT Health Jan. 7, a large language model that when used professionally could land the company in the FDA’s regulatory crosshairs.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, China will apply provisional import tariff rates lower than the most-favored-nation rates on 935 items, the State Council announced. The move aims to boost collaboration between domestic and international sectors, and to leverage resources of both to expand the supply of high-quality goods.

The U.S. FDA’s reissuance of the 2019 guidance for general wellness products seems to carve out new territory for makers of wearables that make modest claims regarding health, but anyone who was expecting a clear break with the 2019 version of the guidance was almost certainly disappointed.

In a big week for W.L. Gore & Associates Inc., the company reported plans to acquire Conformal Medical Inc. and received U.S. FDA approval for its Viabahn Fortegra venous stent for use in the inferior vena cava, iliac and iliofemoral veins.

It doesn’t take a meteorologist to see the storm clouds of uncertainty that will continue to roll in on health care across the globe this year. While the prospects for the medical device industry may be sunnier than for other aspects of health care, some high pressure areas likely will present challenges.

The U.S. FDA’s September 2022 final guidance for clinical decision support (CDS) systems set a dismal record for pushback, but the new administration at the FDA has reissued the guidance with provisions that industry will undoubtedly find encouraging.

The U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has offered a thumbs-up for eight digital technologies to help patients with asthma manage their conditions. The sponsors of these products have three years to turn out enough evidence to persuade NICE to fully endorse those products, after which these platforms could have access to a market of more than five million patients.

Stereotaxis Inc. secured U.S. FDA approval for its Magic magnetic interventional ablation catheter, marking a key step in the company’s effort to evolve from a niche robotics supplier into a more vertically integrated electrophysiology technology provider. The approval positions Magic as Stereotaxis’ first proprietary robotic ablation catheter in the U.S. and follows a series of regulatory and commercial milestones in recent months that reset the company’s growth narrative.