Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. TGA Provides Guidance as Black Triangle Adverse Event Scheme Goes Live Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has posted guidance on its black triangle adverse event reporting scheme. The scheme came into force at the start of the year, leading TGA to share a guide that addresses some of the uncertainties expressed by industry in advance of the go-live day...

p> On-site clinical trials may present a number of participation obstacles for individuals living at distances from clinical trial sites or for patients with mobility problems. Direct-to-patient clinical trials can be an alternative. This article reviews applicable regulations and analyzes current strategies for conducting direct-to-patient clinical trials using technologies, such as mobile 'apps' and wearables to report data, as well as the potential for sending trial dr...

Data Integrity findings have become widespread in the industry with agencies requesting companies to undergo extensive interviews with their employees. These interviews are frequently conducted by independent, trained third parties with the goal of understanding how data integrity failures occurred so that actions can be developed to ensure they do not recur in the future. This article discusses the process and techniques for conducting interviews with personnel. Introdu...

The National Evaluation System for health Technology Coordinating Center (NESTcc) this week put out three requests for proposals to help it build the case for using real world evidence for regulatory and coverage decisions for medical devices. Background In 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) awarded a $3 million grant to the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) to establish NESTcc. The cente...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday opened for public consultation a proposed analysis data reviewer's guide (ADRG) template developed as part of a collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Users Software Exchange (PhUSE). FDA says it is seeking comments from stakeholders to inform its review of the proposed template to determine whether the agency will recommend the template as is, or with modifications, for regulatory submissions involving study data. Acc...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday finalized two guidance documents, including one related to medical device manufacturers sharing information with patients upon request, and another to recommend the addition of a specific safety statement to the product labeling of certain ultrasonic surgical aspirator devices. Sharing Patient Info The five-page guidance, first released as a draft in June 2016 , is meant to convey FDA's position on manufacturers ...

The International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) has opened for consultation until 1 December a third document on examining the use of registries to support medical device regulatory decision making. Background Registries, which can capture outcomes associated with medical device use, were identified by IMDRF in 2014 as having "a significant gap" in optimal use for regulatory decision making. This gap led to the creation of IMDRF Registry Working Group ...

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 clinical trials system is "broken" and there needs to be new ways to collect and utilize patient data, Janet Woodcock, director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told a workshop on real world evidence (RWE) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Wednesday. The comment came at the end of Woodcock's talk in which she also noted that use of master protocols (ie. protocols for trials that look at multiple therapies in ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finalized a slightly tweaked guidance on medical device companies’ use of real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) in winning approvals for their products. FDA says the guidance is meant to explain the "characteristics and sources of RWD and characteristics of RWE that may be sufficient for use in making various regulatory decisions." In addition to the draft guidance, the final guidance includes further clar...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned Chinese over-the-counter (OTC) drug and cosmetics maker Bicooya Cosmetics Limited over poor sanitary conditions and data integrity issues at its Zhejiang, China facility. The warning letter comes after a four-day inspection of the facility last May that resulted in FDA placing the firm on import alert in late June. During the inspection, FDA says its investigator "observed rodent feces throughout [the] facility," incl...

The International Conference for Harmonization (ICH) on Wednesday released the concept paper and business plan for its upcoming guideline on targeted approaches to safety data collection. ICH says the goal of the guideline, referred to as ICH E19, will be to provide "harmonized guidance on when it would be appropriate to use a targeted approach to safety data collection in some late-stage pre-marketing or post-marketing studies, and how such an approach would be implemen...