Communications From Firms to Health Care Providers Regarding Scientific Information on Unapproved Uses of Approved/Cleared Medical Products: Questions and Answers; Guidance for Industry; Availability; Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review; Comment Request

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Food and Drug Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FDA-2008-D-0053]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Communications From Firms to Health Care Providers Regarding Scientific Information on Unapproved Uses of Approved/Cleared Medical Products: Questions and Answers; Guidance for Industry; Availability; Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review; Comment Request</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Food and Drug Administration, HHS <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or Agency) is announcing the availability of a final guidance for industry entitled “Communications From Firms to Health Care Providers Regarding Scientific Information on Unapproved Uses of Approved/Cleared Medical Products: Questions and Answers.” This guidance describes FDA's enforcement policy regarding certain firm-initiated communications of scientific information on unapproved use(s) of the firm's approved/cleared medical products to health care providers (HCPs) engaged in prescribing or administering medical products to individual patients. This guidance finalizes the revised draft guidance of the same title issued in October 2023. The October 2023 revised draft guidance revised and replaced the draft guidance entitled “Distributing Scientific and Medical Publications on Unapproved New Uses—Recommended Practices,” issued in March 2014, which itself revised the final guidance entitled “Good Reprint Practices for the Distribution of Medical Journal Articles and Medical or Scientific Reference Publications on Unapproved New Uses of Approved Drugs and Approved or Cleared Medical Devices,” issued in January 2009. This guidance is not for current implementation, pending the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) decision on the collection of information. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The announcement of the guidance is published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 7, 2025. Submit written comments on the collection of information by February 21, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> To ensure that comments on the information collection are received, OMB recommends that written comments be submitted to <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find the particular information collections by selecting “Currently under Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. The OMB control numbers that FDA is seeking to revise are 0910-0686 and 0910-0485. Also include the FDA docket number found in brackets in the heading of this document. You may submit either electronic or written comments on Agency guidances at any time as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD2">Electronic Submissions</HD> Submit electronic comments in the following way: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Comments submitted electronically, including attachments, to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> will be posted to the docket unchanged. Because your comment will be made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring that your comment does not include any confidential information that you or a third party may not wish to be posted, such as medical information, your or anyone else's Social Security number, or confidential business information, such as a manufacturing process. Please note that if you include your name, contact information, or other information that identifies you in the body of your comments, that information will be posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> • If you want to submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish to be made available to the public, submit the comment as a written/paper submission and in the manner detailed (see “Written/Paper Submissions” and “Instructions”). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Written/Paper Submissions</HD> Submit written/paper submissions as follows: • <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier (for written/paper submissions):</E> Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. • For written/paper comments submitted to the Dockets Management Staff, FDA will post your comment, as well as any attachments, except for information submitted, marked and identified, as confidential, if submitted as detailed in “Instructions.” <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket No. FDA-2008-D-0053 for “Communications From Firms to Health Care Providers Regarding Scientific Information on Unapproved Uses of Approved/Cleared Medical Products: Questions and Answers.” Received comments will be placed in the docket and, except for those submitted as “Confidential Submissions,” publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Dockets Management Staff between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, 240-402-7500. • Confidential Submissions—To submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish to be made publicly available, submit your comments only as a written/paper submission. You should submit two copies total. One copy will include the information you claim to be confidential with a heading or cover note that states “THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.” The Agency will review this copy, including the claimed confidential information, in its consideration of comments. The second copy, which will have the claimed confidential information redacted/blacked out, will be available for public viewing and posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Submit both copies to the Dockets Management Staff. If you do not wish your name and contact information to be made publicly available, you can provide this information on the cover sheet and not in the body of your comments and you must identify this information as “confidential.” Any information marked as “confidential” will not be disclosed except in accordance with 21 CFR 10.20 and other applicable disclosure law. For more information about FDA's posting of comments to public dockets, see 80 FR 56469, September 18, 2015, or access the information at: <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2015-09-18/pdf/2015-23389.pdf.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or the electronic and written/paper comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and insert the docket number, found in brackets in the heading of this document, into the “Search” box and follow the prompts and/or go to the Dockets Management Staff, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852, 240-402-7500. You may submit comments on any guidance at any time (see 21 CFR 10.115(g)(5)). Submit written requests for single copies of this guidance to the Division of Drug Information, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, 10001 New Hampshire Ave., Hillandale Building, 4th Floor, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002; the Office of Communication, Outreach and Development, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 71, Rm. 3128, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002; the Office of Policy, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 66, Rm. 5431, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002; or the Policy and Regulations Staff, Center for Veterinary Medicine, Food and Drug Administration, 7500 Standish Pl., Rockville, MD 20855. Send one self-addressed adhesive label to assist that office in processing your requests. See the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for electronic access to the guidance document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">Regarding the guidance:</E> Kathleen David, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 51, Room 3203, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002, 301-796-1200; James Myers, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 71, Rm. 7301, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002, 240-402-7911; Stephanie Philbin, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 66, Rm. 5456, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002, 301-837-7151; Kathryn Dennehy, Office of Surveillance and Compliance, Center for Veterinary Medicine, Food and Drug Administration, 7500 Standish Pl., Rockville, MD 20855, 240-402-7002; or Julie Finegan, Office of Policy, Office of the Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Bldg. 32, Rm. 4252, Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002, 301-827-4830. <E T="03">Regarding the information collection:</E> Domini Bean, Office of Operations, Food and Drug Administration, Three White Flint North, 10A-12M, 11601 Landsdown St., North Bethesda, MD 20852, 301-796-5733, <E T="03">PRAStaff@fda.hhs.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> FDA is announcing the availability of a guidance for industry entitled “Communications From Firms to Health Care Providers Regarding Scientific Information on Unapproved Uses of Approved/Cleared Medical Products: Questions and Answers.” This guidance describes FDA's enforcement policy regarding certain firm-initiated communications of scientific information on unapproved use(s) of the firm's approved/cleared medical products to HCPs engaged in prescribing or administering medical products to individual patients. FDA is issuing this guidance to provide reassurance to firms that, if they choose to provide communications consistent with the recommendations in this guida ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━