Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) www.alexander.senate.gov Chairman and Patty Murray D-WA) www.murray.senate.gov Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions, (HELP) www.help.senate.gov have launched a bipartisan initiative to examine the process for getting safe treatments, devices, and cures to patients and the role for FDA and NIH in that process.
As Senator Alexander explained, “We want to modernize the way drugs and medical devices are discovered, developed, and approved. We are going to examine the work of NIH contributing funds and much of the research and FDA which regulates all of the medical products,
The Senators are beginning to plan for a bipartisan staff working group and plan to hold a series of hearings in March to examine the drug and medical device discovery and development process. The hearings will also discuss how to better align public policies to support medical innovation while maintaining high standards of consumer and patient safety.
In addition, it has also be announced that another bipartisan initiative is going to focus on examining security issues related to health IT and the health industry’s preparedness for cyber threats.
This announcement came after the news that Anthem Health Insurance, the second largest health insurer in the U.S was the victim of a hacker attack exposing millions of customer records, including names, addresses, birthdays, and Social Security numbers.
The goal is to examine whether Congress can help ensure the safety of health IT, including EHRs, hospital networks, insurance records, and network-connected medical devices like pacemakers and continuous glucose monitors.