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GUIDANCE DOCUMENT

Public Notification of Emerging Postmarket Medical Device Signals ("Emerging Signals") Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff December 2016

Final
Docket Number:
FDA-2015-D-4803
Issued by:
Guidance Issuing Office
Center for Devices and Radiological Health

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency) is responsible for protecting and promoting the public health. This includes helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need about medical products to maintain and improve their health. At the time a medical device is approved or cleared, it has a benefit-risk profile that health care providers, patients, and consumers use to make patient management decisions. Once a medical device is on the market, new information, including unanticipated problems, may change the benefit-risk profile of a device.

FDA is issuing this guidance to describe the Center for Devices and Radiological Health’s (CDRH) policy for notifying the public about medical device “emerging signals.” For the purposes of this guidance, an emerging signal is new information about a marketed medical device: 1) that supports a new causal association or a new aspect of a known association between a device and an adverse event or set of adverse events, and 2) for which the Agency has conducted an initial evaluation and determined that the information has the potential to impact patient management decisions and/or the known benefit-risk profile of the device. Information that is unconfirmed, unreliable, or lacks sufficient strength of evidence is not an emerging signal.


Submit Comments

You can submit online or written comments on any guidance at any time (see 21 CFR 10.115(g)(5))

If unable to submit comments online, please mail written comments to:

Dockets Management
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, Rm 1061
Rockville, MD 20852

All written comments should be identified with this document's docket number: FDA-2015-D-4803.

 
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