The head of the FDA’s artificial-intelligence-focused Digital Center of Excellence, Troy Tazbaz, is departing the agency during what he described as the early stages of a “technological revolution” in healthcare.
“Today marks my 2 year anniversary at the FDA, and my last day,” Tazbaz said in a LinkedIn post Jan. 31. He thanked the leadership of the agency and its Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), as well as other government offices.
“Their willingness to take a chance on me, and their support in allowing me to approach the role with a bit of unconventionality, created an environment where we could push the boundaries with innovative thinking and action,” he wrote.
“This flexibility enabled us to collaborate with industry to ensure that AI and digital health technologies are developed, integrated and managed with the safety, effectiveness and responsibility required to enhance patient care while addressing other critical healthcare challenges.”
Tazbaz’s tenure also saw the creation of an official FDA advisory committee focused on digital health and AI tasked with addressing cross-cutting technical and scientific issues that may intersect with multiple medical areas, while individual products would remain the purview of the agency’s other specialized panels. The center of excellence, meanwhile, was first launched as a coordinating hub within the CDRH in late 2020.
In his farewell post, Tazbaz also encouraged others to consider public service and said “overcoming the challenges ahead will require a dynamic exchange of ideas between the public and private sectors.”
“This cannot be done in isolation, and I sincerely thank the industry for your partnership, support and willingness to collaborate on important initiatives that I am hopeful will accelerate the safe adoption of digital health technologies into healthcare,” wrote Tazbaz, who previously spent 10 years at Oracle, including as senior vice president of strategy.
“We are still in the early stages of this technological revolution, and the possibilities continue to inspire and excite me. But, I believe the true transformative power of AI does not lie in any single product or breakthrough capability,” he said. “Instead, it is compelling us to rethink conventional norms and tackle critical challenges necessary to modernize healthcare across its value chain. And I believe process innovation will be as important as product innovation for this modernization to be successful. That needs collective thinking, focus and clear priorities.”