Watch: Dr. Marty Makary, a leading physician and health policy expert, has launched a monumental digitization project involving over 100,000 binders of archived documents at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These binders reportedly contain more than a century’s worth of medical, pharmaceutical, and regulatory data.

“Digitizing all of this will help speed up drug approvals, innovations, and cures,” Dr. Makary explained, emphasizing the importance of unlocking vast amounts of legacy information trapped in paper files.

The effort marks a significant push toward modernizing the FDA’s infrastructure, which has long been criticized for outdated systems and bureaucratic slowdowns in approving life-saving treatments. By transitioning from paper to digital, the agency is expected to improve efficiency, transparency, and accessibility of critical data for researchers, healthcare professionals, and pharmaceutical innovators.

Health policy analysts say this initiative could have far-reaching implications — enabling faster clinical trials, better safety reviews, and streamlined access to data that could accelerate the development of new therapies.

Dr. Makary’s initiative comes amid broader conversations in Washington and the medical community about the need to reform and modernize the nation’s regulatory systems in the post-pandemic era.