FDA opens comment period on new framework for regulating GenAI-powered medical devices
On August 25, 2026, FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) released a discussion paper seeking public feedback on a regulatory framework for generative AI-enabled medical devices, products built on LLMs and foundation models that produce open-ended, variable outputs and can evolve after deployment. Unlike traditional software, these devices can't be exhaustively tested against a fixed set of inputs and outputs, so FDA is proposing a competency-based approach modeled loosely on how human clinicians are trained and credentialed: a two-stage process combining large-scale "device benchmarking" (testing safety, clinical proficiency, and generalizability against prespecified criteria) with "clinical confirmation" (real-world or clinically representative evidence, ranging from retrospective case review to full prospective trials). Risk would be assessed via a proposed two-axis framework, plotting a device's activity level (from passive infor...