The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017. This bill seeks to change the requirement for companies to report medical device malfunctions to the FDA. Previously, companies had to submit a report within 30 days of a problem. Under the current version of the Reauthorization Act, companies will be able to submit reports once every three months instead. Additionally, these reports will be able to “summarize previously reported product malfunctions, rather than filing detailed reports on each case” as reported by the StarTribune. However, this does not affect the 30-day reporting requirement for medical device companies to report “adverse events” or anything that result in actual injury to consumers.
This measure is part of a piece of legislation that must be renewed every five years and which sets the fees that device makers pay the FDA to review their products. The goal of the agreement from the device maker’s perspective is to reduce the time it takes for the FDA to review products and get them to market. According to the New York Times, this bill “compels the F.D.A. to speed medical devices onto the market — and into patients — faster than ever.” But this may not be in patients’ best interest, because medical device malfunctions are already “vastly underreported” as acknowledged by the FDA.
StarTribune reports that proponents of the change say that it would “simplify the needlessly repetitive process of reporting known product problems.” Minneapolis-based med-tech regulatory attorney Mark DuVal said that “A lot of MDRs (Medical Device Reports) are really boilerplate and repetitive,” and that “[i]t would be nice to be able bundle them.” According to the StarTribune, DuVal thinks that the current system of reporting MDR’s creates a lot of work for companies while doing little to inform doctors about issues that are known. Janet Trunzo, a senior executive vice president with the lobbying group AdvaMed, said in a statement that the reporting provision “will allow the agency to better focus its resources on more serious reportable events.” According to Trunzo, the quarterly summary reporting only applies to well-understood and familiar malfunction incidents. Medical device companies would still be required to file an individual report on any malfunction incident that had not been previously reported.
According to the New York Times, critics of the change do not think relaxing the rules is proper when so much already goes unreported. Jack Mitchell, director of health policy for the National Center for Health Research, said that “[p]ost-market surveillance of medical devices continues to be dangerously slow and clearly inadequate to protect patients from risky devices.” Mitchell thinks that loosening up the reporting rules will “exacerbate the tendency to underreport.” Ms. Tomes, who is now the chief executive of Device Events, which mines FDA’s device data to find signals of problems, also does not think this loosening of the reporting rules is in the public’s best interest. Ms. Tomes pointed out that last year, many reports about battery depletion of cardiac defibrillators were reported as “malfunctions.”
The bill still needs to be passed in the Senate before being signed into law by President Trump. The Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society reports that this bill is “must-pass” legislation because there will be massive layoffs at the FDA if the fee agreements are not reauthorized before the current ones expire on Oct. 1, 2017.
