Dear Colleagues,

It is the end of July and welcome to my monthly update, in which I share the latest news and updates on medical device regulations in Russia and countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

1. Rules of Medical Device Registration in Eurasian Union have been published.

   On 12 July 2016, the Eurasian Economic Commission published the final and approved version of the Eurasian Medical Device Registration Rules (link in Russian) – one of the most long-awaited regulations of the new EEU Medical Device Harmonized model. As was the case previously, the new registration process for medical devices is based on local pre-clinical testing in an accredited laboratory, clinical trials in one of the member states of the Eurasian Union, and a 60-day expertise phase (assessment) by a governmental expert organization (more details).
   In parallel with these new rules, on 5 July 2016, the Russian Ministry of Health published a draft regulation (link in Russian) aimed at amending the Russian tax code and introducing state fees for registration, expert assessment, amendments and renewals of registration certificates under the new Eurasian Harmonized Medical Device registration procedure.
   By the end of July 2016, eleven of the thirteen final editions of second-level regulations will have been published. Experts at the Eurasian Commission expect the new medical device regulation model to be fully operational by the end of the year.

2. Russia: Medical Device Trade Associations Warn about Potential Collapse of State Procurement of Implantable Devices.
   
   On 5 July 2016, the Russian Ministry of Health published  guidelines for determining the maximum amount of wholesale mark-up, to the actual selling price, on medical devices implanted in the human body (link in Russian).
   According to the published document, the maximum size of the wholesale mark-up established by Russian regional authorities takes into account the costs associated with the production of these medical devices. Justification for these production costs must be provided by the medical device manufacturer or its authorized representative. As an example, the calculation of the maximum wholesale mark-up, provided in the published guidelines, is from 1 to 7 per cent or 350 – 10,000 Russian rubles, depending on actual selling price.
   At this same time, leading regional and global medical device trade associations together have called on the Russian Government to postpone implementation of price regulation for implantable devices to January 2018, intensify cooperation between the industry and the regulator, and warn about the potential freezing of state procurement of implantable medical devices in Russia.
3. Federal Law on “Biomedical Cell Products”
   At the end of June 2016, the Russian Federal Law “On Biomedical Cell Products” #180 FZ (Link in Russian) was signed by the Russian President and officially published. This federal law is a basic document which implements the legal terms of biomedical cell products and regulates their research and development with the related donation of biological material, pre-clinical action, clinical studies, registration, circulation, import and export and transportation of such products. The document will come into force on 1 January 2017.

The objective of this blog is to help regulatory professionals better understand the Russian medical device regulatory system. Please post your comments and questions here or in the Russian medical device regulations LinkedIn group.