Fostering Medical Innovation: Voluntary Pilot Program To Streamline Review of Premarket Notification (510(k)) Submissions for Ophthalmic Optical Coherence Tomography Devices

The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Office of Device Evaluation recognizes that an efficient, risk-based approach to regulating ophthalmic Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) technology will foster innovation designed to improve ophthalmic healthcare. To make premarket review of OCT devices more efficient, we are announcing a new voluntary OCT Premarket Notification (510(k)) Pilot Program, designed to develop and refine individual premarket testing recommendations for OCT devices through the pre-submission process to yield more consistent premarket submissions and improve predictability of the 510(k) review process. We are planning to achieve these goals through increased interactive engagement with manufacturers of OCT devices. FDA intends to use the voluntary OCT 510(k) Pilot Program to assess whether the individual testing recommendations provided through the pre-submission process and increased interactive engagement improve the premarket review process and reduce the overall total time to decision (TTD), a shared FDA- industry commitment goal, in support of the Medical Device User Fee Amendments of 2017.