Digital Health Information: Applicable to HIPAA Breach Notification? Policy Statement Clarifies

02/08/2022

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Recently, many guidance documents and draft guidance documents regarding digital health information have been released. This is in response to the increase in numbers of devices used in the course of a clinical trial, including wearable devices, ePRO, eCOA, software such as apps, home monitors, etc. These devices collect health information and store or transmit it outside of the collection site. Such vendors need to be aware of how they are classified to ensure compliance with applicable regulations. If they are not directly considered a medical device, the device manufacturers and app developers may be considered vendors of personal health records (PHR) and would then need to comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Breach Notification Rule. The FTC released a Policy Statement to clarify the scope of this Rule.

Remote Data Collection in Clinical Trials Draft Guidance

01/25/2022

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a draft guidance “Digital Health Technologies for Remote Data Acquisition in Clinical Investigations” for public comment in December 2021. The draft guidance provides best practices for how digital health technologies (DHT) can be used to collect and support endpoint data and what information is needed in an investigational new drug application (IND) or an investigational device exemption (IDE) application that uses DHT. DHT is a “system that uses computing platforms, connectivity, software, and/or sensors, for healthcare and related uses.”

EU Clinical Trials Initiative Strategy Paper – ACT EU

01/18/2022

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The European Medicines Agency (EMA), European Commission (EC), and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) published “Accelerating Clinical Trials in the EU” (ACT EU) in January 2022, a strategy paper outlining their collaborative initiative to transform clinical trials in the European Union (EU). The purpose of the initiative is to work together with the EU Clinical Trials Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 536/2014) (CTR) to support strengthening how European clinical trials are designed, initiated, and conducted, while maintaining participant safety, robust and quality data, and transparency.

Computer Modeling and Simulations for Device Regulatory Submissions Draft Guidance

01/11/2022

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a draft guidance, “Assessing the Credibility of Computational Modeling and Simulation in Medical Device Submissions” late December 2021. The draft guidance provides a framework for assessing if software modeling used to support medical device premarket submissions are credible. Regulatory submissions often lack adequate explanation of the rationale for the models’ credibility for the context of use (COU). The COU is the specific role and scope of the model used to address the “question of interest.”