The Food and Drug Administration has installed Troy Tazbaz, most recently a senior vice president at Oracle, as its new head of digital health.
Tazbaz will be the new director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence, according to an update to his LinkedIn profile Monday morning. He’ll take over for Brendan O’Leary, who has been acting director since February. The previous FDA digital health head, Bakul Patel, left for a digital health strategy role at Google in May.
The FDA’s digital health office, launched in 2020, aims to modernize regulatory pathways for digital health products like medical devices relying on AI algorithms, mobile health apps, and wearables. The center has significant work to do to keep pace with the field’s advances, as O’Leary acknowledged at the DTx East conference in September. “Consumers really expect for their products to keep pace, and FDA’s modifications framework is really difficult with that,” O’Leary said, referencing the FDA’s slow approval process for health apps.
About the Author Reprints
To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page.
STAT encourages you to share your voice. We welcome your commentary, criticism, and expertise on our subscriber-only platform, STAT+ Connect