Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the Washington, DC, office, was quoted in an article titled "Could Health Apps Save Your Life? That Depends on the FDA."

Following is an excerpt:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates everything from heart monitors to horse vaccines, will soon have its hands full with consumer health apps and devices. The vast majority of the health apps you'll find in Apple's or Google's app stores are harmless, like step counters and heart beat monitors. They're non-clinical, non-actionable, and informational or motivational in nature.

Epstein Becker & Green attorney Brad Thompson believes the FDA needs a special group to monitor consumer health apps and devices that are already being used in the wild.

"Within the compliance division at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, (that's the unit within FDA that has responsibility for medical devices), they should develop a small unit, perhaps even just one person, to spend their time looking at the various mobile app marketplaces, searching for certain keywords that are indicative of FDA regulated functionality," Thompson says.

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