Sharing Data for 21st Century Cures – Two Steps Forward…

By Mary A. Majumder, Christi J. Guerrini, Juli M. Bollinger, Robert Cook-Deegan, and Amy L. McGuire

The 21st Century Cures Act was passed with support from both sides of the aisle (imagine that!) and signed into law by then-President Obama late last year. This ambitious legislation drives action in areas as diverse as drug and device regulation and response to the opioid epidemic. It also tackles the issue of how to make data more broadly available for research use and clinical purposes. In our recently published GIM article, “Sharing data under the 21st Century Cures Act,” we examine the Act’s potential to facilitate data-sharing, in line with a recent position statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. We highlight a number of provisions of the Act that either explicitly advance data-sharing or promote policy developments that have the potential to advance it. For example, Section 2014 of the Act authorizes the Director of National Institutes of Health to require award recipients to share data, and Section 4006 requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to promote policies ensuring that patients have access to their electronic health information and are supported in sharing this information with others.

Just as relevant, the Act takes steps to reduce some major barriers to data sharing. An important feature of the Act, which has not been extensively publicized, is its incorporation of provisions from legislation originally proposed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mike Enzi to protect the identifiable, sensitive information of research subjects. Senator Warren, in particular, has been a vocal advocate of data sharing. Arguably, one of the biggest barriers to sharing is public concern about privacy. The relevant provisions address this concern chiefly via Certificates of Confidentiality. Among other things, the Act makes issuance of Certificates automatic for federally-funded research in which identifiable, sensitive information is collected and prohibits disclosure of identifiable, sensitive information by covered researchers, with only a few exceptions such as disclosure for purposes of other research. These protections became effective June 11, 2017. While NIH has signaled its awareness of the Act, it has not yet updated its Certificates of Confidentiality webpage. Read More

House Hearing on Regulation of Laboratory-Developed Tests Displays More Consensus Than Disagreement

By Rachel Sachs

The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing last week on the FDA’s proposed draft guidance regarding laboratory-developed tests (LDTs), as part of its “21st Century Cures” initiative. The hearing, which can be viewed online (here and here), featured representatives from the FDA, industry, and research organizations. And although the various panelists offered differing views on the propriety of the FDA’s decision to begin exercising its regulatory authority over LDTs, there seemed to be more agreement than disagreement among the panelists.

Most interestingly, as Representative Henry Waxman pointed out toward the end of the hearing, “[no]body on the panel [is] arguing that there shouldn’t be a very careful scrutiny of these tests. It seems like the question is who should do it: CLIA or the FDA.” Representative Waxman’s subsequent colloquy with Harvard Medical School Professor Christopher Newton-Cheh on this point particularly helped to differentiate the historical roles of CMS and the FDA in this space. But even those panelists who opposed the FDA’s involvement seemed supportive of expanding CMS’ authority under CLIA to conduct clinical validity analyses. (Anyone interested in the administrative law aspects of this issue should know that problems of shared regulatory jurisdiction have recently received increased scholarly attention, with Jody Freeman and Jim Rossi providing a particularly thorough treatment of the issue in their recent article, Agency Coordination in Shared Regulatory Space.)  Read More