The 21st Century Cures Act: What You Need To Know
The 21st Century Cures Act is a new law signed by President Obama that promises to allocate around $6B for funding medical research, the fight against cancer, simplifying drug approvals, mental health issues, and the opioid wave.
It designates $4.8B for the NIH, of which, $1.8B is kept for the “cancer moonshot” project. $1.6B is allocated for brain diseases and $500M in funding goes to the FDA. The act secures $1B in grants to help states deal with opioid issues and promises to reinforce mental health parity laws and improve access to mental health treatment services.
Lastly, the 21st Century Cures Act allows medical companies to simply provide observational data and “in house” registry information to the FDA as proof to show the efficiency and safety of their new medicine or device. This change may lead to significant time and cost-cutting in the process of obtaining approvals.
