The Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Qionghai, Hainan province, will boost medical tourism by offering cutting-edge medical products and solutions. Established with the approval of the central government in 2013 and granted preferential policies, the pilot zone is located in Boao in the Hainan Free Trade Port area. It aims at providing high-quality medical tourism-related services to visitors from home and abroad. The zone plans to offer specially licensed medical treatments, cancer prevention and care, health management services, rehabilitation, aesthetic medicine and anti-aging treatment.
“As China’s first and only international medical tourism pilot zone, the Lecheng pilot zone enjoys many exclusive favorable policies,” said Liu Zhefeng, Deputy Director of the pilot zone administration. “With support from the central and local authorities, we have made a lot of breakthroughs in institutional innovations, which help improve management and development of the pilot zone, thus contributing to its further opening-up and pilot trials.” The zone, also known as Boao Hope City, has come to be regarded as a major success for the Hainan FTP. It is one of the 11 key industrial parks designed to promote tourism, modern services and advanced technologies in the Hainan FTP, Liu said.
In addition to preferential policies such as zero tariffs, low tax rates and simplified tax procedures – which are benefits of being located in the Hainan FTP – Boao Lecheng pilot zone is also allowed to introduce new and innovative medicines, medical devices and technologies that have been approved abroad but not yet in China. Dozens of world-leading pharmaceutical companies have already established wide-ranging cooperation with the pilot zone, and about 140 types of medical devices and 100 medicines yet to be approved in the Chinese mainland to treat cancer and rare diseases are available in the zone. Liu Yan, Vice President of Chinese biotech enterprise BeiGene, said that special policy measures for the pilot zone have created very supportive conditions for globally innovative medicines and medical devices to speed up their launch in the China market. In January 2020, the company signed an agreement with United Kingdom-based EUSA Pharma for the development and commercialization of the latter’s orphan biologic products siltuximab and dinutuximab beta in China. The drugs have been approved in other regions for treatment of idiopathic multicentric Castleman’s disease and certain types of neuroblastoma, respectively. In November, dinutuximab beta was used to treat a young neuroblastoma patient from Hainan province. To date, treatment with dinutuximab beta has been provided to around 20 juvenile neuroblastoma patients.
In April, the central authorities announced the setting up of an e-prescription center in Lecheng, the first of its kind in China. The center will provide information to agencies that sell prescription medicines, and connect with internet-based hospitals and health insurers. All prescription drugs, except for drugs specifically regulated under the national drug administration law, can be sold through the e-prescription center on the internet without any other authorizations. Another major innovation is a drug insurance program launched last year, which covers foreign medicines yet to be approved domestically, with an annual premium of CNY29 for residents of Hainan and CNY39 for residents of other Chinese regions. The insurance covers up to CNY1 million in drug and medical device costs, the China Daily reports.
