The U.S. FDA has guidances on the books for dental products, but the it unleashed a quartet of guidances – ceramics and cements used in dental procedure – for dental products on the final Friday of September 2024. The agency also issued a guidance without comment – unusual for the FDA – for the well-known, terror-striking pneumatic dental hand tool.

In some ways, remote patient monitoring (RPM) came of age during the COVID-19 pandemic, but payers still worry about the potential for fraud and abuse. A recent report from the U.S. Office of Inspector General supported concerns about fraud and abuse with RPM, a problem CMS will have to address to constrain unnecessary and potentially illicit spending.

The U.S. FDA’s inspection of two facilities run by San Francisco-based Irhythm Technologies Inc., illuminated some of the usual problems with corrective and preventive action. The agency indicated that problems with skin irritation associated with the company’s Zio device should have been handled as medical device reports, a view the company apparently did not share.

The U.S. FDA announced a class I recall declared by Baxter Healthcare Corp., of Deerfield, Ill., for the automated compounding inlets used with the company’s Exactomix compounding systems due to the risk of particulate matter in the inlets.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded a patent case to district court after finding that a patent applicant need not invoke identical terminology when describing a central feature of a catheter technology across multiple patents.

The U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence reported that mental health professionals experienced a dramatic increase in referrals for anxiety and depression over the past decade but noted that digital therapies might help manage the caseload, representing a significant opportunity for developers of these products.

Michelle Tarver, the acting director of the U.S. FDA’s device center appeared on a Sept. 24 webinar to discuss her priorities for the agency going forward, one of which is global health equity.

The U.S. FDA wrapped up the pilot version of the Accreditation Scheme for Conformity Assessment (ASCA) and reported the formation of a permanent ASCA program, which has been seven years in the making.

Azon Medical LLC, a supplier of medical products such as durable medical equipment, is on the hook for slightly more than $1 million for promoting the P-Stim device as eligible for Medicare coverage.

The draft Medicare physician fee schedule for calendar year 2025 provoked a strong backlash from physician societies due to a net cut in physician pay. Device makers have their own concerns, including the latest in a series of controversies over coverage of skin substitutes.