On September 29, 2020, China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), along with seven other authorities, published the Work Plan for the Innovative Development of the Regulation of Drugs and Medical Devices in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.1 The plan was part of China's recent effort to vigorously develop the Greater Bay Area into a cooperative and competitive region consisted of nine cities in the Guangdong Province, along with Hong Kong and Macau, the two Special Administrative Regions.
One of the highlights in the plan is the approval of using urgently needed drugs that are already used in Hong Kong and Macau's public hospitals in designated medical institutions in the nine mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area. The NMPA delegates the power of reviewing and approving new drugs to Guangdong's provincial government.
Following the plan, the Shenzhen municipal government published the Measures to Promote Cross-Border Engagement of Medical Services in February, 2021. The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital (HKU-Shenzhen Hospital) will serve as the first experimental site. According to the HKU-Shenzhen Hospital's director Lu Chongmao, the hospital has submitted a list of 54 new drugs and medical devices based on urgent clinical needs.2 The first batch of over 10 drugs, which targets fields like tumor, rare disease, and respiratory disease, is expected to be approved by the Guangdong Medical Products Administration soon and used at the HKU-Shenzhen Hospital in June at the earliest.
This experiment at Shenzhen is an important step towards cross-border medical cooperation in the Greater Bay Area. It is expected that the other cities will follow suit once the entire mechanism, including procurement, price determination, transportation, and taxation, is fully developed and mature. More and more urgently needed drugs have the potential to enter the mainland market with faster review and approval process. The cooperation in the medical sector is also a substantial step towards the overall economic and strategic integration of the Greater Bay Area.
