---
type: source
title: "FDA TEMPO Pilot: Technology-Enabled Meaningful Patient Outcomes for Digital Health Devices"
author: "U.S. Food and Drug Administration"
url: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-excellence/tempo-digital-health-devices-pilot-frequently-asked-questions
date: 2025-12-05
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [FDA, TEMPO, digital-health, enforcement-discretion, CMS-ACCESS, hypertension, cardio-kidney-metabolic, regulation, reimbursement]
---

## Content

**Announcement date:** December 5, 2025 (Federal Register notice). Statements of interest opened January 2, 2026.

**What it is:** FDA's Technology-Enabled Meaningful Patient Outcomes (TEMPO) pilot — a voluntary program where FDA exercises enforcement discretion for digital health devices used within CMS's CMMI ACCESS model. This creates the first combined **FDA enforcement-discretion + CMS reimbursement** pathway for digital health devices targeting chronic conditions.

**Four CMMI ACCESS clinical use areas (TEMPO targets):**
1. **Early cardio-kidney-metabolic (early CKM):** hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity/overweight with central adiposity marker, prediabetes
2. **CKM:** diabetes, chronic kidney disease, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
3. **Musculoskeletal:** chronic musculoskeletal pain
4. **Behavioral health:** depression or anxiety

**Hypertension is explicitly in scope** (early CKM category).

**Enforcement discretion mechanics:**
- Manufacturers in TEMPO may deploy software, wearables, sensor-based, or AI-enabled devices in routine care settings
- Must collect and report real-world evidence
- Work toward FDA marketing submission evidence package
- FDA does not enforce applicable regulatory requirements during pilot

**Scale:** Up to **~10 manufacturers per clinical use area** selected. This means ~10 digital health products targeting hypertension can operate under TEMPO. National scale for hypertension management is ~73 million affected adults — so TEMPO covers a research fraction, not a population solution.

**Equity dimension:** CMS ACCESS model includes a fixed adjustment for **rural patients** in qualifying tracks. No specific urban food desert or income-stratified equity measure. The ACP (Affordability Connectivity Program) subsidy for internet access was discontinued June 2024, removing the connectivity infrastructure TEMPO-eligible patients in low-income urban settings would need.

**Timeline:**
- January 2, 2026: Statements of interest open
- ~March 2, 2026: FDA sends follow-up requests to selected manufacturers
- March 2026 onward: Selected manufacturers begin deployment

**Legal/regulatory analysis sources:** Wilson Sonsini (ACCESS + TEMPO overview), Manatt (two-door entryway), ArentFox (five things to know), McDermott (race for digital health access).

**Key mechanism:** ACCESS Model CMS reimbursement + TEMPO FDA discretion = first time Medicare will pay for uncleared digital health devices in a real-world evidence collection setting. This creates a genuine market entry pathway that didn't exist before January 2026.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** TEMPO is the regulatory infrastructure that could eventually enable FDA-deregulated digital health to reach Medicare patients with hypertension. The January 2026 FDA CDS guidance + TEMPO + CMS ACCESS model are three interlocking pieces of a new digital health access architecture. If this proves effective, it creates a replication template. BUT: scale is tiny (10 manufacturers, Medicare patients only, research setting) — this is a feasibility pilot, not a population-level deployment.

**What surprised me:** The explicit inclusion of hypertension in the early CKM category. The FDA is formally acknowledging that hypertension digital health needs a structured pathway — not just the general "enforcement discretion" it provided in the January 2026 CDS guidance. TEMPO is more targeted and more meaningful for the hypertension problem than the general guidance.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any equity requirement beyond rural adjustment. The TEMPO pilot applies to CMS ACCESS model participants — these are Medicare patients (65+). The population with the worst hypertension control rates (low-income, food-insecure, working-age) is primarily in Medicaid, not Medicare. OBBBA is systematically removing Medicaid coverage for exactly this population. So TEMPO + OBBBA creates a structural divergence: FDA is creating digital health infrastructure for Medicare hypertension patients while OBBBA removes coverage for Medicaid hypertension patients.

**KB connections:**
- `the FDA now separates wellness devices from medical devices based on claims not sensor technology...` — January 2026 CDS guidance; TEMPO is the next layer of this deregulatory architecture
- `CMS is creating AI-specific reimbursement codes which will formalize a two-speed adoption system...` — TEMPO formalizes a similar two-speed system at an earlier stage (pre-clearance vs. cleared)
- `rpm-technology-stack-enables-facility-to-home-care-migration...` — TEMPO enables RPM deployment at the infrastructure level
- `only-23-percent-of-treated-us-hypertensives-achieve-blood-pressure-control...` — TEMPO is the institutional response to this failure, but scale limitations mean it can't yet solve it

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim: "The TEMPO pilot creates the first combined FDA enforcement-discretion + CMS reimbursement pathway for digital health hypertension management, but its scale (10 manufacturers, Medicare ACCESS participants only) targets a research population rather than the Medicaid and uninsured populations with the highest hypertension non-control rates"
- The TEMPO + OBBBA structural divergence is a strong claim candidate — it's an institutional contradiction occurring simultaneously

**Context:** TEMPO and the CMS ACCESS model are designed by CMMI (Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation) specifically to generate the real-world evidence that traditional FDA review requires. It's a workaround for the regulatory pathway problem where digital health companies need outcomes data to get clearance, but need clearance to collect outcomes data at scale.

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: `the FDA now separates wellness devices from medical devices based on claims not sensor technology enabling health insights without full medical device classification.md`

WHY ARCHIVED: Represents a structural escalation of FDA's January 2026 digital health deregulation — from general CDS guidance to a specific real-world evidence collection pathway targeting hypertension. The Medicare/Medicaid structural contradiction with OBBBA is a high-value claim candidate.

EXTRACTION HINT: Extract the TEMPO + OBBBA structural contradiction as a compound claim. Note the Medicare (TEMPO) vs. Medicaid (OBBBA) split — different populations, diverging infrastructure. The extractor should flag this for the broader "access infrastructure deteriorating while delivery infrastructure improves" pattern.
