Summer is the time when device makers press their cases for add-on and pass-through payments from the Medicare program, and this year’s draft hospital outpatient prospective payment system for calendar year 2024 is no exception. Both Cook Medical and Philips North America are pushing CMS for new technology pass-through (NTPT) payments for their offerings, but these two larger firms have a lot of company in the NTPT sweepstakes.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Advent, Astria, Biophytis, Excision, Hutchmed, Ipsen, Junshi, Pharmala.
A day after a U.S. House committee, on a party-line vote, advanced two bills to reauthorize emergency preparedness programs, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 17-3 July 20 to send its bipartisan reauthorization of the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act to the Senate floor with a do-pass recommendation.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Ambrx, Aqualung, Bloomsbury, Fosun, Hoth, Mabwell, Qihan, Sensorion.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Mediview, T2.
U.S. FDA warning letters to device makers seemed to be on pause for a couple of years, but the agency is picking up the pace with two warnings posted July 18. Outset Medical Inc., of San Jose, Calif., was previously known to be the recipient of a warning letter, but Edge Biologicals Inc. of Memphis, Tenn., took in a warning letter that is replete with repeat violations disclosed in 2015 and 2018, as well as a warning letter issued 11 years ago.
T2 Biosystems Inc. received a third FDA breakthrough device designation with its direct-from-blood molecular diagnostic test for Candida auris. The test joins its T2resistance panel and T2Lyme panel in gaining the breakthrough recognition and the increased access to the FDA that comes with it as the company seeks final approval or clearance. The C. auris test enables identification of the challenging pathogen in three to five hours instead of the several days often required to grow a culture traditionally.
Nearly 13 years after Congress created a biosimilars path to bring competition to the U.S. biologics market, new rules of the road are coming into play, via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), that could change the course for biosimilars in the long haul – if the IRA’s prescription drug price negotiation mandate withstands numerous constitutional challenges.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have floated a new set of guidelines that would govern their reviews of mergers in a variety of markets, including the drug and device industries. While many of these guidelines are vaguely worded and open to interpretation, one of the more ambiguously worded passages states that a merger may be rejected if it could create “a clog on competition,” a phrase that appears in a Supreme Court decision handed down more than 60 years ago.
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