The head of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) device center was criticized by top House lawmakers for not getting a Medical Device User Fee Amendments (MDUFA V) deal to them for review on time. He apologized for missing the statutory deadline and noted his staff have been slammed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.   On 30 March, the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) subcommittee on health met to discuss renewing FDA’s MDUFA program . At the start of the meeting c...

RAPS today announced that two of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top officials will appear on a panel during the opening plenary kicking off RAPS Convergence 2021 . Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), and Jeffrey Shuren, MD, JD, director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), will join a discussion on COVID-19, regulatory affairs, and the impact on patients, on 12 September—the first...

With much of his center’s 2020 agenda on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jeffrey Shuren, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiologic Health (CDRH) on Thursday shared some of his hopes for next year on a call with the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.   “COVID-19 has essentially disrupted the trajectory of the medical device program in 2020. If you really think about it, 2021 is going to be a bit more of a reset,” Shuren said,...

While seeking to safeguard its gold standard for approvals, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is modernizing its 510(k) regulatory review pathway, with more of a focus on predicate medical devices that are 10 years old or less. “We believe that where appropriate, new medical devices that come to market under the 510(k) pathway should either account for advances in technology or demonstrate that they meet more modern safety and performance criteria,” FDA Commissi...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated its medical device safety action plan on Tuesday with “an important and ambitious new goal” and explained the path forward for its planned nationwide device surveillance system.   The new goal to propel the safety action plan— released in April—is centered around ensuring that the agency is “consistently first among the world’s regulatory agencies to identify and act upon safety signals related to medical devices,” FDA...

Medical device companies should want to streamline the process of getting their products reviewed simultaneously by the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) - so why aren’t they? Jeff Shuren, director of CDRH late Monday told attendees of JP Morgan’s annual conference that he thinks fear and a limited amount of CMS staff are two reasons that the parallel review ...

The group of stakeholders building the National Evaluation System for health Technology (NEST) outlined what’s in store for the new future as well as the direction that they want the system to go. "NEST is about how we improve the value, use, and time and cost of using real-world data," Jeff Shuren, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Device and Radiological Health (CDRH), explained to attendees of AdvaMed’s MedTech conference in San J...

The US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA), which carries out the agency's inspection program, will officially begin a major overhaul in the coming weeks, according to FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) Director Jeffrey Shuren. Shuren made the announcement to members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Tuesday at a hearing on the Medical Device User Fee Amendments , which must be reauthorized by 30 Septemb...

Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would soon seek to regulate lab-developed tests more similarly to in vitro diagnostics (IVDs), citing the devices' increasing complexity and role in critical clinical decision-making. And while the plan has received some pushback from legal groups , including the Washington Legal Foundation, it might soon have another, more prominent opponent: Members of Congress. Background LDTs are, as their name imp...

If US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials thought they had finally moved past a scandal that has embroiled the agency's medical device division for years, they apparently thought wrong. This piece has been updated with comment from FDA. See the FDA Comments' section . -Ed. Background On 26 February 2013, the US House Oversight Committee is set to re-examine a 2012 scandal involving FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) in which the agency ...

US legislators are preparing to once again examine the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approach to the regulation of mobile medical applications, this time focusing on its recently released final guidance document which calls for a risk-based approach. Background Under the  Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) , medical devices are defined as being any "instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent...

It's been more than a year since legislators passed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA) into law, and now those same legislators want to know: How is the law doing? Background: FDASIA's User Fee Provisions FDASIA , passed in July 2012, contains provisions that can generally be lumped into two broad categories: user fee programs and reforms. To the former (Titles I-IV), FDASIA reauthorized two major user fee programs, the Prescripti...