For the third time in as many years, Health Canada, the U.S. FDA and the UK Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency have teamed up to issue a set of recommendations for artificial intelligence used in or as a medical device.
Criticisms over the U.S. FDA’s use of advisory committees led the agency to hold a June 13 public hearing during which FDA commissioner Bob Califf said the agency is working to improve the experience of special government employees who take part in these hearings.
Even patent attorneys aren’t particularly collectively excited about standard essential patents, but that hasn’t stopped the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from signing a memorandum of understanding with the U.K. Intellectual Property Office to collaborate on policies related to these patents.
The prior authorization practices of Medicare Advantage programs have drawn the ire of industry and physician societies alike recently, prompting the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to open a request for information in January 2024. Congress seems poised to take matters into its own hands, however, with legislation that would force these plans to work to speed up these prior authorization processes, a bill that has the enthusiastic support of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association.
The U.S. FDA is keen to develop tools for oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) as demonstrated by a batch of research projects designed to inform the review of medical applications of AI. The agency’s concern is that there is a dearth of “robust evaluation methods” for evaluating AI products, thus the need for tools that will allow the agency to clear or approve such products with an assurance that these algorithms are safe and effective for their intended use.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has jumped into the artificial intelligence pool with a prognostic that predicts a patient’s response to immune checkpoint inhibitors as cancer therapies.
Dublin-based Medtronic plc. has issued an urgent device correction letter to customers using the company’s Stealthstation robotic surgical system due to a software error that may provide inaccurate information about the location of the system’s surgical tip in the cranial anatomy.
The U.S. appeals court for the District of Columbia has reversed a lower court’s ruling that the device industry cannot appeal a Library of Congress rule that allows third-party access to the software used to govern the operations of medical devices. While the latest outcome in this controversy is a win for device makers, the trajectory of this case is anything but certain as the next step may be an en banc hearing at the circuit court or an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Medical device manufacturers based in China may feel the FDA has a bullseye on their backs, but two firms located in Canada were the subjects of recently posted FDA warning letters.
The saga of Illumina Inc.’s attempt to reacquire Grail Inc., seems to have come to an end with a capitulation to market regulatory authorities, but Illumina has chosen to spin off Menlo Park, Calif,-based Grail rather than sell the company outright.