On April 7, ten departments in Beijing, including the Beijing Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau, jointly released the "Several Measures to Support the High-Quality Development of Innovative Pharmaceuticals in Beijing (2026)". The document, comprising seven sections and 32 new initiatives, took effect immediately. It covers innovative pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and medical institutions.
This marks the third consecutive year that Beijing has introduced policies to support the high-quality development of the innovative pharmaceutical sector, following similar measures in 2024 and 2025 which yielded significant results. In 2025, the scale of Beijing's healthcare industry reached 1.13 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%. The average time to initiate clinical trials in the city was reduced to 21.6 weeks, nearly 11 weeks shorter than in 2023. A total of 215 global synchronous clinical trials were conducted, and 16 innovative drugs and devices were newly approved, including 6 innovative drugs and 10 Class III medical devices. Johnson & Johnson's "Nicakinumab Injection" became the first biological product in the country approved for a segmented production pilot program. Furthermore, 674 nationally negotiated innovative drugs were directly included in the drug lists of designated medical institutions, and the special drug list for Beijing's inclusive health insurance expanded to 159 items.
Major industrial projects, such as Sanofi's insulin API production base and the localized production of Eli Lilly and Pharmaron's Aflogrelon Tablets, have been established in Beijing. Over 20 key pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson, have expanded investments or set up R&D centers in the city.
The introduction of the "2026 Edition Measures" is expected to further accelerate innovation in Beijing's pharmaceutical and health industry. It involves the rolling implementation of high-quality development actions for the industrial chain and the continuous construction of a full-chain support system encompassing "R&D—approval—production—application." The measures aim to provide a precise, stable, and predictable policy environment for innovative drug and device companies, fully stimulating the development momentum of new quality productive forces.
According to a relevant official from the Beijing Medical Insurance Bureau, the measures are designed to support the development of innovative pharmaceuticals through policy coordination across various stages, including R&D, clinical trials, review and approval, production, distribution, and clinical application. They also support the complementary and differentiated development of commercial health insurance alongside basic medical insurance to expand diversified payment channels. Additionally, the measures promote the circulation of health and medical data, expand the application of artificial intelligence, and accelerate data-driven development in the pharmaceutical and health industry. Strengthening intellectual property protection and continuously optimizing the business environment are also key focuses.
A notable highlight is the 2026 edition's focus on frontier pharmaceutical technologies and foundational innovation. This includes developing no fewer than 15 models in areas like AI prediction, organoids, and organ-on-a-chip technology. In brain-computer interfaces, efforts will focus on R&D for core components such as high-throughput flexible deep electrodes, aiming to develop a 512-channel invasive product and accelerate clinical validation.
In immunotherapy and drug development, the measures call for building high-level R&D platforms to advance clinical translation and application, discovering new targets, and developing candidate drugs. For complex medical procedures, such as coronary intervention for complex lesions, precision radiotherapy for complex tumors, and non-vitrectomy macular epiretinal membrane peeling, there will be research and translation efforts on key core technologies for medical robots. The plan also includes cultivating a group of project leaders with international influence capable of leading international multi-center clinical trials.
To promote the commercialization of innovations, the measures encourage hospitals like Beijing Children's Hospital and the Capital Institute of Pediatrics to develop in-house preparations suitable for pediatric use, with recommendations for inclusion in the national list of commonly used pediatric medical institution preparations.
In optimizing the review and approval process for innovative drugs and devices, the measures encourage innovation in treatments for rare diseases and pediatrics, implementing priority services to facilitate earlier market entry and secure market exclusivity periods. They also promote early involvement and advisory guidance from the NMPA's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei sub-center for innovative products to accelerate the translation of innovations.
To improve the quality and efficiency of drug and device testing, the measures establish a green channel for supplementary application registration testing of drugs, reducing the timeline from 70 to 40 working days. Efforts will advance the construction of testing capabilities for new biological products, adding two new authorizations for batch release of biologicals. The batch release timeline for influenza vaccines will be shortened to 40 working days. Pre-testing services will be offered for innovative medical devices. Beijing will take the lead in completing the expansion of items under the new national safety standards for medical laboratory equipment, implementing immediate testing upon receipt for products conforming to the new standards.
Furthermore, the measures call for exploring new tools, standards, and methods in frontier areas like AI prediction, organoids, and organ-on-a-chip, and accelerating the application of AI in drug re-registration and medical device registration review and approval.
Addressing industrial development needs, the measures propose building a number of "lights-out" laboratories, high-level professional incubators, and open pilot-scale platforms, while supporting leading enterprises in establishing pilot production lines. Support policies for pharmaceutical manufacturing include enhancing the service capacity of industrial platforms, facilitating expanded production of drugs and devices, and accelerating the digital and intelligent transformation of the pharmaceutical industry.
The measures encourage enterprises to grow stronger through strategic mergers and resource integration, with plans to gradient-cultivate a group of high-quality enterprises possessing high-value varieties, high R&D investment, and high growth potential. The goal is to newly cultivate no fewer than 50 specialized and sophisticated SMEs and no fewer than 10 "little giant" enterprises.
To accelerate the digital and intelligent transformation of the pharmaceutical industry, the measures propose implementing a batch of equipment renewal projects, creating demonstration smart manufacturing and green manufacturing factories and parks, with targets of adding no fewer than 10 municipal-level or higher smart factories and no fewer than 5 green factories. Efforts will also focus on cultivating and establishing lighthouse factories, 5G factories, and beautiful factories, while encouraging demonstrative applications of robotics.
For promoting the clinical use of innovative drugs and devices, the measures stipulate that innovative drugs can be quickly listed through a green channel, with a processing time not exceeding 15 working days. Support is provided for the inclusion of innovative drugs and devices in commercial insurance coverage. The measures also push for Beijing's inclusive health insurance and other commercial health insurance plans to cover more innovative drugs, devices, rare disease treatments, and innovative technologies. They promote "one-stop" settlement between commercial health insurance and basic medical insurance and optimize fast claims services.
A notable proposal is the promotion of surgical robot adoption in hospitals. The measures aim to accelerate the wider hospital use of full-category surgical robots (e.g., for laparoscopy, orthopedics, neurosurgery, intervention) and expand full-scenario robotic applications across more hospitals. They encourage the use of leasing platforms for high-value medical equipment like robots, promote innovative leasing models for surgical robots, and continuously accelerate robotic innovation and iteration. The performance monitoring of public hospitals will incorporate factors such as joint R&D of surgical robots, usage effectiveness, and the openness to full-scenario robotic applications.
The measures also include tasks such as making forward-looking layouts in key areas like foundational AI models and AI models for drug R&D and design, establishing a reserve pool of key enterprises targeted for cultivation for listing, and setting up a branch of the Zhongguancun Intellectual Property Protection Center in the International Medicine Innovation Park (BioPark). These efforts aim to support regulatory science research, strengthen intellectual property protection in the pharmaceutical field, leverage the supportive role of commercial health insurance, and comprehensively drive the high-quality development of innovative pharmaceuticals.
Comments