MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Another tech giant may be about to jump into the healthcare space.
Modern Healthcare reported that "leaders" from online retailer Amazon took a meeting last month with the FDA’s global regulatory operations & policy deputy commissioner, Howard Sklamberg, as well as other agency officials. The paper noted the meeting in one of the FDA’s recent calendar updates.
The report provided little information on the scope of the meeting and the FDA declined to give details, but reports speculate that Amazon may be looking at a move in mobile health or guidance on selling FDA-regulated medical products, according to the article.
Amazon’s not entirely new to the healthcare space. The company’s cloud computing platform is HIPAA-compliant and hosts a fair number of healthcare services.
Other tech titan who took meetings with the FDA include Apple Inc. (NSDQ:AAPL) (met with the FDA in December 2013), which recently announced plans to build a ‘HealthKit’ in to new generations of its iPhone software; and Google (NSDQ:GOOG) (also met with the FDA in December) which later revealed its “smart” contact lens development efforts.
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