The National Health Commission continues to issue documents supporting the accelerated entry of domestic medical equipment into hospitals!

The National Health Commission continuously issues documents to support and comprehensively promote the priority use of domestically produced medical equipment in the medical industry!

The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Health Commission's official website published the "Notice of the Autonomous Region Health and Health Commission Office on Further Regulating the Procurement of Imported Medical Equipment and Reagents and Consumables".This "Notice" is the first document issued by the Health Commission since the beginning of the year concerning the strict restriction of imported medical equipment!

The "Notice" clearly states that government procurement should procure domestic products, and for imported products that are indeed needed, a review management system should be implemented! Regarding the review of the "Expert Review Opinion Form for Government Procurement of Imported Products" issued by the expert group, the "Notice" sets strict requirements for the qualifications of the experts!

● The expert review group for imported products should have more than 5 people, non-unit experts familiar with this work, and should include 1 legal expert (with relevant legal professional qualifications). Technical experts should have an intermediate or higher professional title in the relevant professional field related to the purchased product.

● Experts must have good professional ethics, be honest and self-disciplined, abide by the law, have no bad credit records such as bribery, taking bribes, or fraud, and are able to objectively, fairly, and truthfully provide review opinions.

● Participate in the review work in an independent capacity and be willing to accept the supervision and management of the Autonomous Region Health and Health Commission.

● Experts participating in the review should not participate in the procurement review work of the same project as procurement review experts.

It is obvious,The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Health Commission has imposed strict conditional restrictions on the access of imported reagents and consumables, setting upan expert review group of more than 5 people for imported products, and has also put forward professional requirements for the qualifications of experts.

In addition, the "Notice" clearly stipulates that,experts participating in the review should not participate in the procurement review work of the same project as procurement review experts!

Earlier, the official website of the National Health Commission published "Reply to Proposal No. 0692 (Medical and Sports Category No. 079) of the Fifth Session of the Twelfth National Committee of the CPPCC" (hereinafter referred to as the "Reply"), which gave a clear reply to the proposal made by a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC regarding the priority procurement of independently innovative medical devices in government procurement.Among them,

Regarding"Supporting the procurement of domestic medical devices"It is clearly stated:

01 Actively support the procurement of domestic medical devices

First, in procurement demand management, priority should be given to procuring qualified domestic equipment.

First, strengthen procurement demand management.Clearly, procurement needs must meet relevant standards, should reflect the requirement of supporting domestic products, use general parameters, do not discriminate against domestic equipment, and do not set technical parameters based on a certain imported product. When organizing procurement activities, implement government procurement policies and give priority to domestic equipment.

Second, when formulating the configuration plan for large medical equipment, it is clearly required to implement tiered configuration.

Guide medical institutions to reasonably equip appropriate-level medical equipment according to their functional positioning and medical technology development level.

And implement pilot projects for the development and application of domestic medical equipment,

Promoting medical institutions to configure practical domestic equipment.

Third, carry out the selection work of excellent domestic medical equipment items.

Organize the selection of a catalog of excellent domestic medical equipment that meets clinical needs, has excellent product quality, has market competitiveness, and has development potential, and guide medical institutions to use more domestic equipment.

This means that the National Health Commission has begun to exert its efforts in guiding public medical institutions to give priority to configuring domestic equipment!

Following this, recently, the National Health Commission issued another document, releasing the"2018-2020 Configuration Plan for Large Medical Equipment", which clearly states that by the end of 2020, a total of 22,548 units of large medical equipment will be planned and configured nationwide,including an additional10,097 units,which will beimplemented over 3 years. The "Configuration Plan" clearly statesthat tiered configuration should be implemented for large medical equipment, and the over-equipment of public hospitals should be strictly controlled.

Tiered configuration means that public hospitals cannot only favor imported equipment and high-end equipment.The configuration of large medical equipment should be determined based on the hospital's functional positioning and clinical service needs. At present, a large number of secondary and below hospitals and non-clinical emergency departments are guided to prioritize the configuration of domestic medical equipment!

02 Strictly restrict the approval of imported equipment.

In addition to encouraging the priority procurement of domestic medical equipment that meets standards in terms of procurement demand configuration, another aspect is to restrict the procurement of unnecessary imported equipment!

The "Reply" mentions:

For domestic equipment that the country encourages and supports and has reached advanced technical standards, and for those that have been included in the catalog of excellent domestic medical equipment,medical institutions are encouraged or required to prioritize the procurement of domestic equipment.For the procurement of imported equipment, the National Health Commission will organize expert reviews uniformly, namely"concentrated review, unified approval." In 2016, our commission used the management method of "concentrated review, unified approval" for imported equipment,Canceling the application for the procurement of imported equipment by the commission's budgetary units2168 units/sets, accounting for 32.7% of the total number of applications.

03 Medical insurance catalog sets price limits and payments to promote the priority use of domestic products.

The "Reply" also clearly mentions thatTo encourage the application of high-quality and low-priced independently innovative medical devices,Medical insurance has taken some positive measures in payment policies:

First, price-limiting payments are implemented for some high-value medical consumables, using economic leverage to encourage insured persons to use low-priced products.

Second, actively promote payment method reform, through the promotion of per-case payment and per-unit payment based on total cost control, the costs of examination, diagnosis, and medication become the costs of medical institutions, promoting them to proactively select high-quality and low-priced medical materials and medical equipment.

Third, some regions, according to the supporting capacity of the fund, include domestic original medical service items within the scope of fund payment through expert review, promoting the application of innovative products.

Government support for the procurement of domestically produced medical equipment is based on the fact that China's domestic medical device industry has begun to increase its innovation efforts, with more domestic medical equipment companies increasing their independent research and development.However, this is based on the reality that the usage rate and market coverage in hospitals are still far lower than imported products.This is a guiding support policy that has been introduced.

This is a tonic and a catalyst for the rapidly rising domestic medical device companies.The accelerated innovation of domestic medical equipment requires strong policy support, provided that it can win with quality in clinical applications!