Eucomed urges new thinking in light regulatory merger:

Europe's largest medical device trade association, Eucomed, has responded to the news that the UK's Medical Devices Agency is to merge with the Medicines Control Agency by calling for some rethinking of the traditional regulatory basis (see this issues, pp 3-4). All European health authorities should "develop a new approach for the growing variety of emerging medical technologies that elude the traditional drugs-device divide", it advocates. The association says that it hopes the new measures in the UK will open the door to a new thinking that goes beyond the distinction between medical devices and pharmaceuticals.