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Professor Nicolas Terry discusses the FDA’s final guidance regarding what are known as general wellness products in his July 29 post to the blog Bill of Health. The blog is part of Harvard Law’s Petri-Flom Center.

The guidance applies to FitBits and the like, and classifies them for the most part as not being medical devices, Professor Terry notes. The FDA instructs that the devices must be intended for general wellness and present low risk to the people who chose to use them, he wrote.

Professor Terry is the Hall Render Professor of Law and executive director of the Hall Center for Law and Health. He testified before Congress on July 13 about the need for privacy protections for mobile health apps. He was invited by the White House to take part in the Precision Medicine Initiative Summit in February 2016. He also is a member of the Health IT Consumer Workgroup. His research interests lie primarily at the intersection of medicine, law, and information technology. His recent scholarship has dealt with health privacy, social media and health, big data, and health care fragmentation. He started the podcast, “The Week in Health Law” with Professor Frank Pasquale of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. The podcast is available for download at iTunes, and PodBean, and can be listened to at Stitcher Radio. He is one of the permanent bloggers at HealthLawProf and at Bill of Health. His recent publications are available on the Social Science Research Network, and he can be followed on Twitter @nicolasterry.