By: Bakul Patel, M.S., M.B.A. and Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D.
Engaged patients! Quantified self! Lifelogging! These buzzwords describe an exciting technology-based, patient-centered approach to living healthier. The myriad of systems that record, share, and use personal and health data have become a significant help for many of us by putting information at our fingertips to use when and where we think it might help promote a healthy lifestyle. The ultimate goal of these products is to improve our quality of life.
From wearable sensors to simple tracking apps, more and more consumers are choosing to use technology to monitor their health and motivate them to engage in health-promoting activities. These products, which may count steps, calculate burned calories, or record heart rates and sleep cycles, all have the goal of helping individuals to live a healthy lifestyle.
The FDA seeks to advance public health by promoting innovation and development in this area by continually adapting our regulatory approach to technological advances to meet the needs of patients and consumers.
This week, we finalized our guidance on medical device data systems (MDDS), and we recently issued two draft guidance documents that outline our thinking about low-risk devices intended to promote general wellness, and our risk classification approach to medical device accessories. We committed to issue these guidances in the FDASIA Health IT Report of April 2014.
Through these actions, we continue to clarify which medical devices are of such low risk that we will no longer focus our regulatory oversight on them or we will regulate them under a lower risk classification, narrowly tailoring our approach to the level of risk to which patients or consumers are exposed.
The MDDS guidance confirms our intention to not enforce compliance with applicable regulations for technologies that receive, transmit, store, or display data from medical devices. We hope that finalization of this policy will create an impetus for the development of new technologies to better use and display this data. We also updated the Mobile Medical Apps guidance to be consistent with the MDDS final guidance. We will discuss our MDDS approach at an upcoming webinar.
Last month, the FDA also proposed to not examine regulatory compliance for low risk products that are intended only for general wellness. These products are designed to maintain or encourage a general state of health and may associate a healthy lifestyle with reducing the risk or impact of certain diseases or conditions. We hope this policy fosters the development of low-risk products intended to promote a healthy lifestyle.
And finally, we issued draft guidance proposing to regulate medical device accessories based on the risks they present when used as intended with their parent devices and on the level of regulatory controls necessary to assure their safety and effectiveness, independent of the risks of their parent devices. Some accessories can have a lower risk profile than that of their parent device and, therefore, may warrant being regulated in a lower class. For example, an accessory to a Class III parent device may pose lower risk that could be mitigated through general controls or general and special controls and thus could be regulated as Class I or Class II.
Through such smart regulation we can better facilitate innovation and at the same time protect patients.
Bakul Patel is Associate Director for Digital Health in FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health
Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., is Director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health
– See more at: http://blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/2015/02/smart-ways-to-manage-health-need-smart-regulation/#sthash.imxh67h2.dpuf
