Tuesday, November 5, 2013
The FDA has moved tentatively into the world of smartphones and social media, with its guidance often lagging behind industry expectations and its own activities being grown carefully. These in-house initiatives are now due to gain a new component. The FDA is working on a drug shortages smartphone app.
The app is part of a strategic plan the FDA devised after gauging through comments to a Federal Register notice what people want. This process reiterated that people want real-time information on drug shortages, with healthcare systems particularly keen to know how long they will last and what alternatives are available. "We recognize we need to improve our communications … with the public and healthcare providers about drug shortages," FDA deputy director of regulatory programs Dr. Douglas Throckmorton told reporters on a call attended by FierceBiotech IT.
Work on the smartphone app is progressing alongside efforts to improve the FDA drug shortages website. The U.S. authority plans to add therapeutic categories to the website, as well as giving users the ability to sort and search the data. The goal of both the smartphone app and website
improvements is to make information "more accessible and user friendly," particularly for people who are only interested in a specific therapeutic area, Throckmorton said. The FDA is yet to disclose whether it is developing the app for Android or Apple ($AAPL) devices, or when it expects to introduce the product.
The app is part of a strategic plan the FDA devised after gauging through comments to a Federal Register notice what people want. This process reiterated that people want real-time information on drug shortages, with healthcare systems particularly keen to know how long they will last and what alternatives are available. "We recognize we need to improve our communications … with the public and healthcare providers about drug shortages," FDA deputy director of regulatory programs Dr. Douglas Throckmorton told reporters on a call attended by FierceBiotech IT.
Work on the smartphone app is progressing alongside efforts to improve the FDA drug shortages website. The U.S. authority plans to add therapeutic categories to the website, as well as giving users the ability to sort and search the data. The goal of both the smartphone app and website
improvements is to make information "more accessible and user friendly," particularly for people who are only interested in a specific therapeutic area, Throckmorton said. The FDA is yet to disclose whether it is developing the app for Android or Apple ($AAPL) devices, or when it expects to introduce the product.