The FDA approval process for medical devices and other gadgets can take a while, but things might be sped up by quite a bit in the future. The agency has just announced a new “Innovation Pathway” program that allows priority reviews of “truly pioneering technologies,” that could possibly reduce the approval process time by half. In an ironic twist, the program itself will need some further review before it’s deployed, but the FDA has already got it started on a limited basis with the brain-controlled robotic arm for DARPA being the first submission. If you’ve got plenty of free time, there is a rather lengthy video available after the jump of the FDA’s webcast that announces the program.