Senate Health Committee Releases Report on FDA Modernization to Accelerate Patient Access

By Sam Barron | Tuesday, 17 February 2026 08:31 PM EST

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., issued a report Tuesday on how the Food and Drug Administration can be modernized to encourage medical research.

The nearly 20-page report outlines more than a dozen ways the FDA and Congress can improve agency operations.

“Biomedical innovation holds enormous promise for the American people,” Cassidy said. “But ‘innovation’ is meaningless unless it creates products that actually help patients.”

“While many parts of the FDA work well, unnecessary bottlenecks slow patients and consumers getting the products they need,” he added.

Cassidy, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, stated the panel’s recommendations align with President Donald Trump’s mission to improve health for American children and families.

“Ultimately, it should be easier to make Americans healthy by empowering them with tools and information to make healthy choices and live better lives,” he said.

“The HELP Committee looks forward to coordinating with the FDA under its new leadership to promote patient access, accelerate U.S. competitiveness, and improve family health,” Cassidy added.

Recommendations include delivering affordable, lifesaving cures faster through reduced regulatory hurdles and increased predictability in review processes. They also propose integrating artificial intelligence and other technologies into approvals while maintaining safety standards.

The report emphasizes strengthening the FDA’s Human Foods Program to ensure families access safe, healthy food—a step critical to achieving Trump’s goal of ending the chronic disease epidemic in the United States. It calls for retaining lifesaving medical research domestically by streamlining clinical trials and fostering FDA-developer collaboration.

Additional recommendations target bolstering the FDA workforce through incentives for top American scientists and experts. Cassidy, a physician, stated he aims to “initiate a collaborative, bipartisan process for reforms to strengthen the FDA and get better, more affordable products to patients faster.”

He noted unpredictable FDA reviews disproportionately impact rare disease drug approvals. “FDA teams can differ greatly in the extent they require testing or impose standards not calibrated to relevant risks,” Cassidy wrote.

“The perceived disconnect between senior FDA officials’ forward-leaning rhetoric and cautious reviewer practices creates further unpredictability.”