FDA and Veterans Health Administration to Collaborate
As part of a reinforced commitment to drug safety, the FDA announced last week that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Veterans Health Administration to share information about drugs, biologics and medical devices regulated by the FDA. According to the FDA, the "goals of the collaboration are to explore ways to enhance postmarket medical product safety data collection and risk communication through more robust interagency activities. It will promote efficient use of tools and expertise for medical product risk identification, validation and analysis [and] will help build infrastructure and processes that meet the common needs for evaluating the safety, efficacy, and use of medical products."
As pointed out by Mark S. Senak, author of the hit blog "Eye on FDA," however, this new collaboration "is perhaps most noteworthy because one would have assumed that this was going on all along."
