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The Health Research Authority (HRA) announced that England and Wales have begun implementing changes to their clinical trial regulations on June 1st, 2024. These changes include the removal of the requirement for trials to submit annual progress report to their Research Ethics Committee (REC) and the process of submitting safety reports. Scotland and Northern Ireland, following review, also implemented these changes to their regulations making the updates now applicable in all four of the UK nations as of August 1st, 2024.
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On November 6th, 2024, the International Council of Harmonization (ICH) published the draft version of ICH E6(R3) Annex 2, a long awaited update to the good clinical practice (GCP) section of the ICH Harmonized Guidelines.
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In October 2024, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a final guidance: “Electronic Systems, Electronic Records, and Electronic Signatures in Clinical Investigations: Questions and Answers”. It is intended for sponsors, principal investigators, institutional review boards (IRB), contracted research organizations (CRO) (all of which are considered regulated entities) and other interested clinical trial stakeholders that use electronic records and systems.
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In September 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released another draft guidance titled “Considerations for Generating Clinical Evidence from Oncology Multiregional Clinical Development Programs” for sponsors intending to conduct global clinical development programs (CDP) for new cancer treatments. The guidance provides advice on using evidence obtained from multi-regional clinical trials (MRCT) to support marketing applications.
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In September 2024, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a draft guidance for industry titled: Integrating Randomized Controlled Trials for Drug and Biological Products Into Routine Clinical Practice in association with the FDA’s Real-World Evidence program. This guidance was released the day before their final guidance on Conducting Clinical Trials With Decentralized Elements, both guidance discuss the FDA’s current position on collecting health information from sources outside of the clinical research site in order to improve enrollment and protocol adherence to scheduled visits
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A recently posted investigator warning letter cited three separate findings. The first was issues with improperly randomizing participants to treatment arms. Participants received the investigational product (IP) instead of the protocol specified
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released “Guidance on How the HIPAA Rules Permit Covered Health Care Providers and Health Plans to Use Remote Communication Technologies for Audio-Only Telehealth” in June 2022, called “guidance on HIPAA and audio only telehealth” for clarity and brevity in this blog. This guidance clarifies how covered entities can provide audio only telehealth while complying with HIPAA Rules to protect the privacy and security of the participants or patients’ protected health information (PHI).
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The European Medicines Agency (EMA) released a Complex Clinical Trials Questions and Answers guidance document in May 2022. Complex clinical trials (CCT) are defined as “being non-conventional in the sense that they have elements, features, methods or combination thereof, including novel approaches, that confer complexity of their designs, conduct, analyses or reporting.”
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a guidance “Bioavailability Studies Submitted in NDAs or INDs – General Considerations” in April 2022. Bioavailability (BA) is defined as “the rate and extent to which the active ingredient or active moiety is absorbed from a drug product and becomes available at the site of action.”
