Welcome to the latest installment of Arnold & Porter’s Virtual and Digital Health Digest. This digest covers key virtual and digital health regulatory and public policy developments during June and early July 2025 from the United Kingdom and European Union.

There has been a flurry of new guidance from the Medical Device Coordination Group this month, including guidance on classification of medical device software, on supply of software apps through online platform such as the App Store and Google Play, and on the interaction between the Medical Device Regulation and the EU AI Act. These are welcome guidance documents to provide important clarification for manufacturers as they develop software medical devices, although the guidance documents inevitably cannot cover every situation and leave some questions unanswered. Continue Reading Virtual and Digital Health Digest – July 2025

Clinical research studies within the NHS in England and Wales require Health Research Authority (HRA) approval, which brings together the HRA’s assessment of governance and legal compliance with the independent ethical opinion by a Research Ethics Committee (REC). The HRA has recently changed the requirements for the UK GDPR transparency wording in new health and social care research applications submitted via the Integrated Research Application System (IRAS). The HRA service had previously provided a review service for sponsors’ GDPR transparency statements. In October last year, the HRA communicated its new updated GDPR template to all sponsors. The new HRA template was developed to ensure that research participants have all the information that they need to make an informed decision about the ways in which their personal data can be used during a clinical trial.Continue Reading UK Health Research Authority GDPR wording template to be used from 1 April