FDA Schedules Workshop on Virtual and Augmented Reality in Medicine

The FDA will hold a March 5 public workshop on evaluation practices for virtual and augmented reality in medicine at the agency’s White Oak Campus in Maryland.

The workshop will discuss evaluation techniques for hardware, standards development, and assessment challenges for applications of extended reality (XR) in medicine.

The agency’s goal is “to identify critical gaps that may impede medical XR device development, innovation, and to advance the evaluation of medical XR devices and applications, thus accelerating the development of safe and effective medical XR devices benefiting patients and healthcare.”

The FDA aims to help advance the development of evaluation techniques for medical XR devices and applications to “ultimately accelerate the development of safe and effective medical uses of XR.”