FDA Tiered Approval

have an interesting op-ed on a tiered approval regime for the FDA:

Instituting a codified approval paradigm based on four tiered levels of clinical effectiveness (biomarkers, clinical signs and symptoms, disease modification and clinical outcomes) — with evidence regarding clinical utility progressively increasing — would greatly reduce the regulatory uncertainty and subjectivity, as well as the time to approval of innovative medicines.

Moreover, the four tiers, coupled with a commitment to apply state-of-the-art technologies (Apple Watch, telemetry and other health monitoring systems) to obtain clinical evidence would allow for additional learnings from use of drugs by practicing doctors treating real world patients. This knowledge would unearth additional uses, information that can be added to the product label to allow safer and more effective use of drugs and the identification of drug combinations that lead to even greater health benefits.

See also Bartley Madden’s work on Free to Choose Medicine which would similarly create dual tracks, one the standard FDA process and a second observational track that would bring drugs to market more quickly with the tradeoff being fewer clinical trials. As clinical trials rise in expense and more treatments are targeted towards smaller patients groups (i.e. personalized medicine) and as statistical techniques improve, we will need and can benefit from reforms to the FDA process along these lines.

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