The State Council issued a guideline on March 11 to give the medical industry a healthy boost.

It said that by 2020, innovation capacity of the medical industry should be greatly increased, supply of urgently-needed clinical drugs will be increased, and the scale of the industry will expand, with annual growth rate of the main business revenue higher than 10 percent.

The guideline states that in order to achieve these goals, innovation and entrepreneurship should be encouraged, more innovation-driven middle and small-sized enterprises with technologies and high-end talents should be set up, and the research ability of new medical products should be increased.

It also required efforts to upgrade the medical equipment, mainly developing the key devices such as digital detectors, superconducting magnets and X-ray tubes with high heat capacity, and technologies such as 3-D printing and data collecting and analysis.

The new rule Good Manufacturing Practices on Medicines will be strictly implemented to perfect the product tracking systems. It also encourages using modern bio-technology to improve the traditional drug production methods, build environmentally-friendly industrial parks and recycle the byproduct materials to reduce pollution.

To better integrate this industry, the government will promote pharmaceutical enterprises to implement cross-sector mergers and acquisitions while optimizing the industrial structures.

Development of the pharmaceutical industry also needs the coordination of different regions, according to the guideline. It suggested building international-level research centers in eastern areas with abundant capital and high technologies, and production and export bases of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the western and the northeastern areas that have large amounts of TCM resources.

The guideline also states to better develop this industry, the country should also perfect the medical service systems, relieve patients’ burden by controlling irrationally high expenses and reduce repetitive and unnecessary medical examinations in different hospitals while encouraging doctors to work in several medical institutions.

In addition, the pharmaceutical industry should also take the advantage of the Belt and Road Initiative to go global, promoting big medical enterprises to invest overseas, build research centers, production bases, and sales and services networks. Efforts should also be made to develop internationally influential brands.

The government should also step up efforts to improve legislation on supervision of drugs and medical equipment, punish illegal enterprises, protect intellectual property rights, and crack down on fake and shoddy products.