Drug diversion in hospitals is a serious concern, facilitated in part by inadequate security controls that allow unauthorized staff to access the pharmacy stock. To help thwart this problem and improve medication management, Taipei, Taiwan-based Cyberlink Corp. and Imedtac Co. Ltd. are teaming up to bring facial recognition technology to the hospital medicine cabinet.

HONG KONG – Chinese med-tech regulators said in December that conditional approvals are now available to medical devices after the government created speedy review channels for devices that the country needs.

With many on Wall Street transfixed by the three injectable calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) therapies cleared in the prophylactic migraine market, Satsuma Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s prospects with STS-101 may have gone overlooked, at least until lately.

MALAYSIA – Asian countries, like India, have been struggling to find a middle ground to the effective pricing of drugs and medical devices over the past year and several are looking at health technology assessment (HTA) programs as a solution for this issue in the coming year. Boston-headquartered consulting firm Analysis Group Inc. recently looked at how HTA programs in Japan, South Korea and China varied and what could be gleaned from their experiences.

HONG KONG – South Korea’s Medical IP Co. Ltd., an artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical 3D printing and software company, has won the FDA’s nod for its medical imaging analysis solution Medical Image Processing (Medip).

HONG KONG – Pentax Medical Co., of Tokyo, has gained CE marking for its artificial intelligence-based polyp detector Discovery. The detector assists endoscopists in finding potential polyps during a colorectal examination. The software has been trained using more than 120,000 files from about 300 clinical cases.

Following lengthy consultations with industry, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has released its new regulatory framework for in vitro companion diagnostics (IVD CDx) that becomes effective in February.

A Chinese study has established a previously unknown direct mechanistic link between elevated mechanical tension caused by impaired alveolar regeneration and progressive idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), highlighting a pathogenic mechanism that may underlie fibrosis.