Tag Archives: medical devices

NCHR’s Statement to FDA Advisory Committee Meeting on Neurological Devices

June 3, 2021


I’m Dr. Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research.  Our center is a nonprofit think tank that scrutinizes the safety and effectiveness of medical products, and we don’t accept funding from companies that make those products.  Today I’m speaking from my perspective as a scientist trained in epidemiology and public health who left Harvard more than 30 years ago to come to Washington D.C. to work in the House of Representatives. I worked as a Congressional investigator for the Subcommittee that conducted oversight over all of HHS, and that’s when I first learned about the laws and regulations governing the FDA.  I was responsible for several oversight hearings that attracted enormous media attention, because we found that patients had been harmed when the FDA was not following the law pertaining to FDA regulation of medical devices.

The law states that devices must be reasonably safe and effective.  It’s not exactly clear what reasonably safe or reasonably effective means, and often the FDA states that if they have reason to believe that similar devices are reasonably safe and reasonably effective, that’s good enough.  The special controls for Class II devices that the FDA has suggested for devices you’re reviewing today and tomorrow provide some evidence that the devices will work as intended and will be reasonably safe, but the general controls for Class I devices do not.

Neurological devices are important, and some of these devices are somewhat complex.  Obviously something called a “barf band” is not a complicated device, and it is an example of an acupressure device that costs only about $10, but if the goal is to prevent nausea and vomiting, and the company wants to sell it in the U.S., shouldn’t it be proven to work, like any other neurological device?  And some of those devices cost $20 or $30 or even over $200.   Just because the risks are small should not make it OK for FDA to let companies sell devices that are not effective if used as directed.  The standards for medical devices should be higher than the “let the buyer beware” standards of dietary supplements – which are basically nonexistent standards.

I was reassured that there are randomized controlled trials on many of the devices you’ll be reviewing today and tomorrow, but there are many different companies making many different versions of these devices, so the fact that some are shown to work doesn’t mean that they all work!  For example, when  chemotherapy patients want to reduce nausea and vomiting, they want to know if one of these acupressure devices is more effective than others.  And even when some devices are shown to work in a randomized controlled trial, that definitely doesn’t tell us that a new, similar device made by these same companies or any other companies will be safe and will be effective.  

The FDA has a reputation as the gold standard for safe and effective medical products, but that standard has been tarnished when patients are shown to be harmed in recent documentaries and in TV programs on during prime time this week.

I respectfully urge you to urge the FDA to up their game, by regulating all these neurological devices as Class II, and requiring the kind of meaningful evidence for new devices that we would want for any device that we use as health professionals, as patients, or as consumers.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.  I appreciate your service on this panel and look forward to hearing your discussion of these devices.

Device warning letters plunged nearly 90% over 5 years. An FDA official predicts a rebound

David Lim, MedTech Dive: January 10, 2020


FDA warning letters to medical device manufacturers slid by nearly 90% between 2015 and 2019, but may be set to rebound upward in 2020, according to device center Associate Director for Compliance and Quality Erin Keith. Warning letters are used by FDA to alert a manufacturer it “has significantly violated FDA regulations,” such as misstating what a device is indicated for or having poor manufacturing practices, according to the agency.

Warning letters are used by FDA to alert a manufacturer it “has significantly violated FDA regulations,” such as misstating what a device is indicated for or having poor manufacturing practices, according to the agency.

The downturn in Center for Devices and Radiological Health warning letters from 81 in fiscal year 2015 to nine in 2019 comes amid a major effort to reorganize the FDA device center that proved “very disruptive to the compliance office,” Keith said.

“It is organized in a different way now than it was in the past, so the processes have had to be worked out,” Keith told the Food and Drug Law Institute’s annual compliance conference in December. “We can’t issue a warning letter if we don’t do it timely, according to the evidential requirements.”

[…]

Still, some patient safety advocates are concerned the drop in warning letters cannot be entirely attributed to the restructuring changes at the agency.

“I don’t think that downward trend can adequately be explained by the reorganization that is taking place,” Public Citizen Health Research Group Director Mike Carome said.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, said the trend is emblematic of a regulator that is overly focused on pleasing industry.

“It could have several different causes, reorganization could be one. [Medical Device User Fee Amendments] regulations could be part of it, which requires more meetings. But there is this emphasis on customer service, which is defined as making life easier for the industry. Industry is an important customer, but so is the American taxpayer,” Zuckerman said.

Over the past decade, the device center has also focused on shifting how it communicates with manufacturers, focusing on pushing companies to prioritize making decisions that improve quality and patient outcomes rather than simply achieving compliance with regulatory requirements. The goal, Keith said, is to have companies address potential issues before they rise to the warning letter stage.

“We as a philosophy for the center don’t want to have to go to enforcement,” Keith said. “We want to get to problems when they are smaller and easier to fix.”

Another method FDA has utilized is increasing the number of alternative methods of disseminating information, such as issuing Letters to Health Care Providers and Safety Communications. For example, in April 2019, the agency issued a safety communication alerting patients and providers of mammography problems at a medical clinic in Ohio, noting the facility “was unable to meet the parameters for a key quality control test on the day of the 2018 annual inspection.” FDA noted in the safety communication quality problems at East Palestine Family Medical Clinic dated back to October 2017, and recommended patients screened at the facility receive an additional mammography.

“I think it’s important that we won’t wait to let people know that there is an issue patients and providers need to know about by letting a compliance process catch up to documentation,” Keith told MedTech Dive. “Sometimes we can get what we need, have the public know what’s going on and get a change by sharing information. When it’s more appropriate to use a more traditional compliance activity, we will do that.”

[…]

Read the original story here

Roundup 2019: Breast implants, mesh, paclitaxel-coated devices among hot topics at FDA expert panels

Maria Rachal, MedTech Dive: December 23, 2019


It was a busy year for FDA’s expert advisory committees, called on to tackle many of its biggest medical device questions in 2019, new and old.

The Circulatory System Devices Panel met in June in reaction to a concern that emerged in late 2018 after a meta-analysis found a late mortality signal in patients receiving paclitaxel-coated devices. Other topics, like the benefit-risk profile of transvaginal mesh, had been hashed out in numerous meetings over the past few decades.

​Repeated meetings aren’t necessarily a negative, said Diana Zuckerman, president at the National Center for Health Research since 1999.

“We can’t think of these public meetings as a bad outcome … We wish that people weren’t being harmed by breast implants, by mesh, by Essure, and so on. But if they are being harmed, then I’d much rather there be a public meeting about it then to have it covered up,” Zuckerman said. “For breast implants especially, it’s made an enormous difference in terms of public awareness.”​

Of all the device meetings this year, none seemed to draw as much attention as a March meeting on breast implant safety. It came amid growing recognition of a type of lymphoma that can develop around the devices called breast implant associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, or BIA-ALCL, as well as a vast collection of potentially related symptoms called breast implant illness.

In one of the clearer impacts from an advisory panel this year, FDA followed up months later by asking Allergan to initiate a worldwide recall of certain textured implants, and issuing a draft guidance outlining a black box warning and patient safety informed consent checklist to be included with the implants.

Raylene Hollrah, a breast cancer and BIA-ALCL survivor who has advocated that FDA improve breast implant safety, said that while the advocacy community has made significant strides with regulators and plastic surgeons this year, language in FDA’s draft guidance regarding breast implants’ risks is “way too vague.” Comments on that proposal are due Monday.​

“I am definitely not anti-implant,” she said. “I want women to have a choice but I want it to be a safe one.”

Better transparency on the chemicals and metals contained in breast implants remain at the top of advocates’ list, Hollrah said.

Eight months after the breast implants meetingFDA asked its Immunology Devices Panel to weigh immunological responses to devices based on different metal elements in implants.

Zuckerman said that meeting represented the first time she’d heard high-level FDA scientists and officials link certain immunological responses to devices and vocalize a need to better understand what causes that link, and which patient and product factors increase risk.

“It was very interesting because it wasn’t specific to any particular product,” Zuckerman said. “[When] there’s an advisory committee on one product, there always seems to be a lot of caution about suggesting immunological responses to implants,” adding that panelists seemed “much more open-minded about these issues than they usually are.”

One undercurrent across many meetings was inadequacy of post-approval studies and spotty adverse event reporting, leading to incomplete data with which panelists could form opinions. Once a device is commercialized, it’s very difficult to complete postmarket studies, Zuckerman said.

Even if those postmarket studies and other forms of surveillance are happening, “it’s too late for the patients being harmed,” Zuckerman said. “Most of us would much rather know that some implant that’s going into our body was adequately tested before it was put in our body. Not that it might be tested a year or two later.”

[…]

Read original story here.

Report Claims More Women than Men Injured by Medical Devices

The ICIJ used the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database to conduct the research. This data is publicly available and contains eight million reports which have been filed by doctors, patients and manufacturers when a medical device is suspected of putting someone at risk, causing injury or resulting in death.

Steps had to be taken to identify the gender of those within the database as although the FDA gathers information on the sex of patients, this data is not made publicly available. Therefore, in order to overcome this obstacle, the ICIJ realised that the sex of patients was sometimes disclosed through pronouns and adjectives within the incident reports submitted to the FDA.

The ICIJ group followed four steps to identify the gender of those in the FDA MAUDE database:

1. Generate a set of labels

This stage involved classifying patient sex in 1,000 incident reports from the MAUDE database. Patient sex was classified as female, male or unknown.

2. Assign rules to the computer

The group used rules to train the computer to conduct automatic sex classification on the data.

3. Validate the results from the computer

Humans looked at the results from the computer and implemented additional rules to improve the quality of the results.

4. Run the code against all of the data in the FDA Maude database

Using 1997-2017 (the same time frame as the Implant Files investigation), the computer assigned a gender to 23% of patients with 96% accuracy.

The ICIJ claim that the algorithm created using the above steps was able to positively identify the sex of the patient in more than 340,000 injury and death cases. These findings reported 67% of these people were women and 33% were men.

Talking about the findings, the ICIJ stated: “The trend we noticed is consistent with studies that have shown that women experience higher rates of hip-implant failure than men and have stronger immunological reactions to metal-containing devices.”

Other experts within the industry were keen to voice their opinion over the importance of looking at the effects of medical devices on different genders. Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research commented: “Having information about sex is very important because some products differ in safety between men and women.”

Madris Tomes, founder and CEO of Device Events and a former FDA manager described the ICIJ’s work as critical. Tomes said: “It has long been unclear why the FDA’s device division redacts data elements that are so vital to scientific study…age, sex, and even the outcome of the adverse event are redacted by the device division but not the drug division.”

“But, if we are to look at allergy and autoimmune issues (presented in the FDA Immunology panel’s meeting on Metals in Implants) resulting from the metals and polymers in the hips, this could provide a second reason why the revision rates for women is higher than it is for men. It is an area where more research is necessary, and it shows the need for the FDA to un-redact fields which are so important for patients, physicians and hospitals to evaluate the safety of devices”, she added.

This report is part of the well-known Implant Files, which began from a report on medtech adverse events last year.

Read original story here.

NCHR’s Comments on the Safer Technologies Program (STeP) for Medical Devices

National Center for Health Research, November 18, 2019


National Center for Health Research’s Public Comments on 
Safer Technologies Program for Medical Devices; Draft Guidance for
Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff; Availability
[FDA-2019-D-4048]

Thank you for the opportunity to express our views on the proposed Safer Technologies Program (STeP) for medical devices.

The National Center for Health Research (NCHR) is a non-profit think tank that conducts, analyzes, and scrutinizes research, policies, and programs on a range of issues related to health and safety. We do not accept funding from companies that make products that are the subject of our work, so we have no conflicts of interest.

We appreciate FDA’s efforts to get medical devices with an improved safety profile to consumers and patients more quickly. However, the mission of the FDA is to protect patients and consumers from medical products that are not proven safe or not proven effective. FDA guidance must be very clear how this program would protect patients from unsafe or ineffective medical devices. The proposed guidance is so vaguely worded that it is not possible to have confidence that patients’ needs will be protected.

We agree that increased interactions with FDA throughout the development process and more timely interactions could 1) speed development and review, and 2) improve the quality of the data available for review by providing more consideration into needed data, study design, and early detection of concerns. Unfortunately, most medical devices are cleared through review pathways that require little or no clinical data to demonstrate safety or effectiveness, and while premarket approval applications (PMA) require clinical trial data, those studies are often small, poorly designed, and lacking in appropriate control groups. Thus, while the proposed Safer Technologies Program may get medical devices to patients sooner, the program will be harmful to patients unless it also strengthens the premarket requirements for scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

Textured breast implants, Essure, POP mesh, and metal-on-metal hip replacements are just a few of the many examples of devices that were implanted in tens of thousands of patients and consumers prior to being removed from the market due to serious, unexpected complications. It is disturbing that the proposed guidance includes no explicit instructions aimed at reducing the harm caused when patients unwittingly serve as guinea pigs for implants and other devices that were not adequately tested prior to going on the market. It is not fair to patients or their physicians to rely primarily on post-market studies and surveillance, because too many patients will be harmed before those studies are completed, and too many of those studies will never be completed. We therefore respectfully urge the FDA to revise the proposed guidance in ways that ensure that all medical devices undergo more rigorous testing prior to being approved or cleared.

For questions or more information, please contact the National Center for Health Research at info@center4research.org or at (202) 223-4000.

More Than Half Of Surgical Stapler Malfunctions Went To Hidden FDA Database

Sydney Lupkin and Christina Jewett, KHN; May 30, 2019


UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 9 – The outside of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters is seen in White Oak, Md., on Monday, November 9, 2015. The FDA is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and has been in commission since 1906. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

The Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged that more than 56,000 never-before-disclosed surgical stapler malfunctions were quietly reported to the agency from 2011 through 2018.

The newly acknowledged reports were detailed in an executive summary for FDA advisers. The agency convened a meeting of experts this week to help it determine whether surgical staplers should be moved out of its lowest-risk category — reserved for simple devices like tongue depressors and bandages — to a higher grade that may require testing and additional oversight. Surgical staplers are used to cut and seal vessels and tissues inside the body.

When the FDA initially announced the meeting in March, it acknowledged in a letter to doctorsthat “many more device malfunction reports” were reported to the agency than it had publicly disclosed. The FDA executive summary published this week shows that the total reports more than doubled when the agency took nonpublic reports into account, totaling nearly 110,000 malfunctions or injuries from 2011 through 2018.

“It shocks the conscience,” said Chad Tuschman, a lawyer representing Mark Levering, 62, of Toledo, Ohio, who suffered a serious brain injury after a stapler malfunction caused massive bleeding in 2018. The surgeon, hospital and device maker Covidien, a division of Medtronic, have all denied allegations of wrongdoing in an ongoing legal case.

Surgical staplers have a unique ability to harm patients if they malfunction. Often used in minimally invasive surgeries, they are meant to both cut tissue and vessels and then quickly seal them. Patients have been gravely harmed when staplers have failed to fire or seal tissue, suffering from massive bleeding or infections if stomachs or intestines aren’t sealed properly.

The nonpublic reports were sent to the FDA as “alternative summary” reports, the topic of a recent Kaiser Health News investigation that focused on the agency accepting millions of hidden reports related to medical devices — including for surgical staplers.

The agency had previously acknowledged that in 2016, even as it posted fewer than 100 stapler-related injuries in a public database called MAUDE, it accepted nearly 10,000 reports into its little-known internal alternative summary reporting database. (The data in the FDA’s executive summary contains reports for staplers and staples, which experts have said were just different names for the same problem.)

Tuschman said he was stunned that there were more hidden reports than public ones in the executive summary. “The first question should be ‘Why?’ Why would they have the right to submit to a hidden database?”

Leading surgical stapler makers include divisions of Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson. Medtronic has said the FDA granted it exemptions for stapler-related malfunctions; Johnson & Johnson said it has not. (Ethicon is the name of its subsidiary medical devices company.)

On Thursday, the advisory panel recommended switching surgical staplers to a higher-risk classification with additional safety requirements, according to meeting attendee Jack Mitchell, director of health policy for the nonprofit National Center for Health Research. FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Caccomo declined to confirm this, citing a media office policy against telling reporters what happens at advisory committee meetings, which are open to the public.

“Every surgeon that I have ever worked with has had stapler failures,” said Dr. Doug Kwazneski, a Michigan surgeon who authored a survey in 2013 about “unacknowledged” stapler problems after searching the FDA’s public database of device incidents and coming up empty-handed.

“Going into something without data is dangerous,” Kwazneski said. “If the information exists, we should have access to it.”

More than 400 deaths have been reported since 2011 in the FDA’s public MAUDE database; fatalities can’t be reported to the alternative summary reporting database. Deaths were associated with Ethicon and Covidien products.

In recent communications about stapler safety to doctors, the FDA has advised against using the staplers on large blood vessels.

Kwazneski said surgical staplers are a time-saving tool, which lessens the risk of anesthesia complications during surgery, for example. But it’s important for physicians to remember they can fail.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, said that alternative summary reports are “a well-kept secret” and that any reports related to their existence were “done in a way that was not understood as a repository for hundreds of thousands of serious adverse event reports.” […]

See the original story here.

How the FDA Handles Recalls of Life-Saving Implants Could Put People at Risk, Patients Say

Nicole Carr, WSBTV; May 20, 2019



Jonesboro resident Geraldine Robinson is one of millions of Americans who use an implanted medical device to improve, and possibly extend her life.

In 2013 she was implanted with a defibrillator to help with her congestive heart failure. She went to the doctor for checkups every six months. Robinson thought her device would keep her healthy for years. But last month the hospital called to tell her that device’s battery was failing. Robinson rushed to the emergency room.

“I was scared they wasn’t going to get to me in time,” Geraldine said.

The next day doctors replaced her device. The reason for the surgery noted on her patient information card was, recall.

Channel 2’s Nicole Carr searched the FDA recall database and found Robinson’s device had been recalled two years earlier. The manufacturer’s suggested course of action was to monitor the device.

While Robinson said she had no idea her device was recalled, her hospital said she was mailed a letter to notify her. Robinson said she never got that letter.

Diana Zuckerman, president of The National Center for Health Research, said she wasn’t surprised that Robinson’s recalled device remained implanted for years.

“This is the doctor having to say to the patient, ‘This implant in your body has been recalled but we don’t think you should have it removed unless you’re having obvious problems with it,” Zuckerman said.

Zuckerman was also said Robinson is most likely not alone in her confusion, and often patients don’t learn their device is recalled.

“Perhaps the patient has moved and the doctor or even the hospital doesn’t know where that patient is anymore,” Zuckerman said.

Linda Radach, an implant recipient herself, said she believes the recall process needs an overhaul.

“The FDA is very, very slow to use their authority to issue a recall instead requiring warning letters and requiring post market surveillance studies. Most of which are never completed,” Radach said.

According the FDA website they hardly every issue a recall, instead trusting manufacturers to self-report. An FDA spokeswoman said recalls are not the only way they get dangerous products off the market.

There are several patient resources available for medical device recipients, including questions to ask your doctor about the approval process.

Radach said a 2006 metal on metal hip replacement failed leaving dangerous cobalt chromium debris in her system.

“I’ve now had six total hip replacements,” Radach said. She said her issues were never reported to the FDA by her doctors and her device was never recalled. She did her own research and found her device had been approved for market three years after it was put in her body. “That alarmed me enough to realize this was much, much bigger than just me.”

Radach told Channel 2 Action News many of the parts that made up her implant were cleared through the 510k process which rarely requires clinical trials on human patients. The process has been in place since 1976.

Zuckerman said the 501K process it’s not enough.

“All those companies have to do is prove that their new device is substantially equivalent to a device that’s already on the market,” Zuckerman said.

In 2011 Zuckerman co-authored a report that found from 2005 until 2009, 113 recalls were class one. Only 21 of those recalls went through clinical trials. She said things haven’t improved.

“Instead of saying ‘let’s be more stringent and require clinical trials for more implants,’ they’re doing exactly the opposite,” Zuckerman said. […]

See the original story here.

NCHR Comment on FDA’s 510(k) Third Party Review Program Draft Guidance

National Center for Health Research: December 13, 2018


Comment of the National Center for Health Research Regarding the
510(k) Third Party Review Program:
Draft Guidance for Industry, FDA Staff, and Third Party Review Organizations.
OMB Control Number 0910-0375

The National Center for Health Research (NCHR) is a non-profit organization which conducts original research to better inform policy makers, health professionals, and patients.   NCHR accepts no funding from any entity which manufactures or distributes medical products.

We appreciate the opportunity to comment on this draft guidance.  We note that this draft guidance applies to low-to-medium risk medical devices, which concerns us because many Class II devices are permanent implants that have the potential to cause permanent harm to patients.  In fact, our research indicates that even Class I devices have been subjected to high-risk recalls by the FDA due to the potential for causing death or permanent harm.1 2 3

We have several serious concerns about the draft guidance.  First, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) are accountable for the efficacy and safety of their medical devices.  FDA standards require that devices manufactured by OEM’s comply with relevant regulatory standards.  OEMs are required to track, monitor, and report product issues to FDA.  Overseeing the OEMs and their reporting are FDA’s responsibility to ensure patient safety.

Second, in the past FDA has had the opportunity to review the work of any third party reviewer, and reject it if deemed inadequate or shoddy.  In fact, the agency has often found problems with the third party reviews.  The proposed guidance would sharply reduce the agency’s oversight of third party reviews, which will clearly compromise safety.  Even if certified as qualified, third party review companies have an inherent conflict of interest: If their standards are too high, no device company will hire them and they will go out of business.  The system is similar to the EU regulation of medical devices, which has resulted in very harmful decisions, such as the clearance of the PIP breast implants that were found to use non-medical grade silicone.4  In addition, investigative reporters recently obtained CE clearance for a “surgical” mesh that was made out of a plastic mesh bag used for oranges.

Transparency is also a crucial factor.  Currently, third party review companies are not required to clearly label an OEM device indicating that a critical repair has been completed by someone other than the OEM.  Once that repair is made, the device is no longer the same device that was approved or cleared by FDA.  It is important that this chain of accountability is not broken or interrupted.

While we understand the desire of FDA officials to reduce medical device review times and reduce the burden on FDA staff and industry, the 510(k) program already is a quick way to get devices to market and the device industry has clearly benefitted from it.  The 510(k) pathway has been widely criticized by the Institute of Medicine, physicians, patients, and the media for its lack of clinical trials and lack of scientific evidence.5  Despite its weaknesses, the 510(k) pathway is considered superior to the EU regulatory system, however.  By reducing the “burden” for FDA staff and industry, the proposed guidance increases the burden on patients and doctors to figure out which devices are safe and which are not.  This would clearly put U.S. patients at greater risk.

FDA has not demonstrated that its proposed changes to the third party review pathway of Class I and Class II devices will benefit patients.  By definition, 510(k) devices only rarely are substantially superior to recent predicates.  Speeding up the process of clearance is not demonstrated to benefit patients.  Moreover, with registries, NEST, and other planned efforts to improve post-market surveillance still far from effectively implemented, any loosening of 510(k) regulations is very premature.

Finally, we note that Commissioner Gottlieb responded to recent media criticism of CDRH regulations by promising improvements to the 510(k) pathway to ensure patient safety.  The third party review program clearly moves in the opposite direction, reducing patient safety, rather than protecting patients from potentially harmful devices.   We strongly oppose it for that reason.

 

References

  1. Zuckerman, D.M., Brown, P, and Nissen, S.E.  (2011) Medical Device Recalls and the FDA Approval Process, Archives of Internal Medicine, 117, 1006-11.
  2. Zuckerman D.M., Brown P., Nissen S.E. (2011). In Reply, Archives of Internal Medicine, 171(11), 1045.
  3. Zuckerman D.M., Brown P., Nissen S.E. (2011). In Reply, Archives of Internal Medicine, 171(21), 1963.
  4. Zuckerman, D., Booker, N, and Nagda, S. (2012) Public Health Implications of Difference in US and European Union Regulatory Policies for Breast Implants, Reproductive Health Matters, 20 (40),102-111.
  5. Zuckerman D.M., Brown P. & Das A. (2014) Lack of Publicly Available Scientific Evidence on the Safety and Effectiveness of Implanted Medical Devices,  JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(11): 1781-1787.

 

Senate Approves FDA’s ‘Breakthrough Pathway’ for Medical Devices

Gail Kalinoski , Contributing Reporter, Health Care Business:  March 23, 2016

A bipartisan Senate committee has approved three bills that could help get medical devices to patients sooner by creating a “breakthrough pathway” through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but not everyone is happy about the actions.

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Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, wrote on behalf of the watchdog group that it was “concerned that the focus of these bills is on getting medical products to market more quickly, instead of making sure they are safe and effective.” The group’s letter added: “Whether creating a new breakthrough pathway for devices (which already are approved based on much lower standards than drugs) or deregulating health IT software, for example, patients will be at risk.”

The group said it strongly opposed one of the bills passed, the Medical Electronic Data Technology Enhancement for Consumers’ Health Act, (S. 1101) known as MEDTECH, stating it would remove “potentially lifesaving and life-threatening health IT software entirely from the FDA’s regulatory oversight, and could possibly eliminate recalls for IT devices with life-threatening flaws.”

But the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) applauded the bills approved earlier this month by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee.

[…]

AdvaMed also supported the HELP committee’s work on the Advancing Breakthrough Devices for Patients Act (S. 1077) and the Combination Product Regulatory Fairness Act (S. 1767).

“Taken together, these three bills will help improve patient access to some of the latest medical advancements and foster a more efficient, predictable and transparent review process within the FDA, all the while maintaining the agency’s strong standards for safety and effectiveness,” Scott stated.

Zuckerman’s group disagreed, once again opposing the bills for lowering standards and undermining or micromanaging the FDA. Her letter stated that the vague language on what classified a device as “breakthrough” may “encourage many device companies to apply for ‘breakthrough’ status, overwhelming the resources of the FDA.”

The National Center for Health Research also claimed that smaller clinical trials could compromise the majority of patients because they may have “fewer women, people of color and patients over 65 – often too few to ensure that the device is safe and effective for those groups.”

[…]

Read full article here.