In the wake of the Grassley Knoll's meltdown over Vioxx (the drug that an FDA advisory committee recommended be returned to market in case anyone noticed) the White House took the $10 million allocated for new FDA IT systems (that would allow the agency to interface with health plans and stop passing the a tin cup to achieve interoperability and develop a common computer code that could be used for spontaneous and real time reporting of drug benefits and risks via electronic health records) was cut and re-allocated to hire additional paper pushers in the agency's Office of Drug Safety.... I have it on good authority that the decision was purely in response to Grassley. So the agency was left scrambling -- during the events described in the WSJ article -- to close a huge gap in its IT budget.
But somehow none of that is relevant. It is easier to piss all over the agency at time when it is under siege and make the hard working people who are seeking to put together a post market IT effort look like idiots. And of course we all know that consultants are the smartest people on the planet...Especially the Breckenridge Institute consultants... But that's the next post..
But somehow none of that is relevant. It is easier to piss all over the agency at time when it is under siege and make the hard working people who are seeking to put together a post market IT effort look like idiots. And of course we all know that consultants are the smartest people on the planet...Especially the Breckenridge Institute consultants... But that's the next post..
