Will the FDA be the new digital pioneer?

Fitness trackers or apps may already be a crucial part of your everyday healthy-living-routine. But getting those to market can be a very difficult process in the first place. This could change very soon, according to the FDA’s latest plans.

The use of digital apps or devices in the medical world is growing fast – and of course, it does not stop at fitness bracelets. Next to special applications to track down and analyse health data, there are already way more capable systems that can figure out cancer treatment plans or devices that allow physicians to predict brain conditions.

But as different as those inventions may seam, they have one thing in common: It takes a lot of testings and even more time to bring those to the market – where people finally can benefit from them.

More efficient policies may be just about to come

The good news is: The Food and Drug Administration, short FDA, now wants to boost innovations in the medial industry by creating way more efficient policies. By doing so, it will become much easier for brilliant engineers and developers to help people with their inventions.

According to FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, the agency is working on clarifications to its policies. This could help developers in an easy way: As the clarifications show them some important guidelines, they can work on their next inventions without having to consult the FDA in the first place to ask about what is their position.

Another important change will be the fact that the agency wants to make it easier for so-called low risk products to hit the market. In other words, this means that inventions that are very unlikely to harm consumers in any way will maybe soon be tested within a third party certification program. This new way of approval would speed up the process tremendously, as the FDA itself would not have to preview every single news product or application in the first way.