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Jaspreet Takhar

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued new guidance on the ethics and governance of large multi-modal models (LMMs). The guidance details over 40 recommendations for governments and companies involved in healthcare and technology, and covers both the design and deployment of LMMs. So what are LMMs? LMMs, also known as “general-purpose foundation models”, are a type of generative AI. LMMs can accept one or more type of data input and generate diverse outputs that…

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has published a new roadmap setting out its timeline for an overhaul of the UK medical device regulations. The MHRA is taking a phased approach, with new legislation pencilled in for 2024 on Post Market Surveillance (PMS) and in 2025 for a wider core framework. Current plans indicate certain areas of alignment with the requirements of the EU Medical Devices Regulation (EU MDR). The MHRA further…

Manufacturers of Machine Learning-Enabled Medical Devices (MLMDs) face a key challenge: existing requirements and processes on the notification and management of ‘substantial’ and ‘significant’ changes to medical devices need adapting for MLMDs. The MHRA, together with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada, has published five guiding principles on predetermined change control plans (PCCPs) to help resolve this tension. What is the tension between AI and change management for medical devices? Some…

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has launched a public consultation on its draft guidance on transparency in the health and social care sector. The proposed guidance emphasises the importance of going beyond the legal requirements of the GDPR in order to build trust with patients, and builds on themes of openness, honesty and patient engagement. The consultation is open until 7 January 2024. We’ve set out our top six takeaways on the proposed guidance…

The EU has published its draft Standard Contractual Clauses for the procurement of AI (AI SCCs). These are drafted for public organisations (such as public hospitals) wishing to procure AI systems developed by an external supplier, and are based on the requirements for high-risk AI systems in the EU AI Act. The AI SCCs might be a good starting point, but dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the clauses are based on some…

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has published a draft reflection paper which considers the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to the development, regulation and use of medicines. This paper, which is now open for public consultation, evaluates the risks, benefits and opportunities that AI and ML present to the entire lifecycle for medicines. Underlying the paper is EMA’s concern around the challenges of integrating AI and ML into the medicines lifecycle,…

On 25 July 2023, the EU Commission published its response to the European Citizens’ Initiative’s petition on “Save Cruelty-free Cosmetics – Commit to a Europe without Animal Testing”. The petition received 1.2 million signatures from EU citizens and the EU Commission must respond to petitions gathering 1 million signatures or more. The EU Commission has confirmed the following in response to the requests of the petition: Protect and strengthen the cosmetics animal testing ban The…

We’ve set out our top ten tips on ensuring GDPR compliance if your organisation is procuring AI solutions from third parties, whether this is to train an AI imaging system, integrate AI solutions into a patient-facing app or to allow your staff to make use of generative AI. These tips are based on the issues which we see are attracting regulatory scrutiny in practice, the potential stumbling blocks we’re coming across in supplier terms, as…

At the end of last week, two European Parliament Committees published the latest version of the EU AI Act. The new draft reflects months of political wrangling, but it also demonstrates that EU legislators have listened to the (many) criticisms levied at the EU AI Act until now. So what’s new? We’ve set our top ten changes: Higher penalties: If you thought the previous proposal was eye-watering, it’s about to get steeper. The most serious breaches will…

On 27 April 2023, the MHRA announced that the UK government intends to introduce legislation this spring that will extend the acceptance period of CE marked devices onto the Great Britain market. The MHRA’s announcement has provided much needed. This statement made by the MHRA is an update to their announcement made on 28 March 2023, on which we previously blogged. This is a very welcome step from the MHRA after what has been a…