Comment Re:Useless FDA (Score 2) 50
I'm not sure what the grant landscape looks like for optical CGMs, or related technology, specifically; but I don't think that the FDA does much medical research funding. Lots of food safety and some laboratory standards and development for the sort of wide-scale testing that food safety requires; but for drugs and medical devices they are mostly just in charge of judging clinical trials and postmarket reporting; not running their own.
The Feds as a whole do a fairly substantial amount; but FDA research money is largely for food safety related stuff. Not entirely, I had a quick poke through taggs.hss.gov and there were some FDA grants and cooperative agreements for 'prospective' and "phase 2" trials of a few directly medical things(didn't see blood glucose, might have missed it, I'm not a huge federal database wonk); but one of the other HHS divisions is probably a more likely bet(CDC has a slightly epidemiological bent; but enough interest in public health stuff that diabetes is probably on the menu. HRSA looks more closely focused on capacity to handle specific difficult patient populations; but you might be able to sell low-invasiveness CGM improvements as a major boon to telehealth-based diabetes management. NIH is probably the best bet if you want to do some straight medical R&D.
The Feds as a whole do a fairly substantial amount; but FDA research money is largely for food safety related stuff. Not entirely, I had a quick poke through taggs.hss.gov and there were some FDA grants and cooperative agreements for 'prospective' and "phase 2" trials of a few directly medical things(didn't see blood glucose, might have missed it, I'm not a huge federal database wonk); but one of the other HHS divisions is probably a more likely bet(CDC has a slightly epidemiological bent; but enough interest in public health stuff that diabetes is probably on the menu. HRSA looks more closely focused on capacity to handle specific difficult patient populations; but you might be able to sell low-invasiveness CGM improvements as a major boon to telehealth-based diabetes management. NIH is probably the best bet if you want to do some straight medical R&D.