Digital health—that is, medical care enhanced or made possible by the use of technology—has changed the landscape of healthcare in America. Innovation in this sector is at an all-time high and 2024 will no doubt see greater expansion and acceptance of digital health within the care continuum.
Health Law Scan
Legal Insights and Perspectives for the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare providers are scrambling to understand the impacts of the May 11 expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE). Luckily for most telehealth providers, the outlook of their operations post-PHE is relatively clear.
On February 9, 2022, US Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced bipartisan legislation designed to modernize health privacy laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and account for emerging healthcare technologies not addressed by existing law.
As the availability and variety of digital health tools continue to increase, evidence is also being presented that those tools are having a meaningful impact on health outcomes. In a recent blog post, members of our technology, outsourcing, and commercial transactions team dove into the findings of two reports, Digital Health Trends 2021: Innovation, Evidence, Regulation, and Adoption, offered by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science; and a report from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation’s Telehealth Research Incubator.
Members of our emerging business and technology team recently hosted a webinar on seed financing structures for digital health companies. The program, led by partner Benjamin David Novak and associate Jessica Lee, discussed the market trends in digital health company financings as well as the various deal structures frequently used in seed financings.
Members of our digital health and technology, outsourcing, and commercial transactions teams recently published a resource providing analysis of key considerations for tech service providers and life sciences companies collaborating in the digital health space, whether in regards to the development of artificial intelligence or other software, the provision of data hosting and analysis services, or a more complex collaboration.
It’s now been over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a public health emergency, ushering in monumental changes for telehealth regulation. If you’ve been following Health Law Scan, we hope our updates have provided some clarity to the everchanging regulatory healthcare framework and the legal issues that can vary across payers, across states, and even across countries.
Our FDA team recently published an Insight covering key considerations for artificial intelligence (AI) healthcare application developers and users, highlighting the FDA’s current regulatory scheme for AI/machine learning (ML)-based software, potential FDA enforcement discretion that may apply, and recent FDA developments impacting AI/ML technologies.
In the most recent edition of our global telehealth series, we take a look at the United Kingdom’s telehealth expansion, discussing the UK National Health Services’ recently released guidance providing a set of best practice principles for third-party partners to follow. The LawFlash covers telehealth laws and regulations and the role of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, as well as looks forward to future changes and reform.
Our FDA and digital health teams recently published a LawFlash on how a Biden administration will affect the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) oversight and regulation of medical devices and digital health.