The General Office of the State Council of China recently issued the "Opinions on Enhancing Traditional Chinese Medicine Quality and Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Chinese Medicine Industry", emphasizing the need to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the Chinese medicine industry.

The document called for optimizing the industrial structure and layout, improving the quality of Chinese medicine manufacturing, promoting the digital and intelligent development of the Chinese medicine industry, nurturing renowned Chinese medicine varieties, enhancing the inheritance and innovation of Chinese medicine processing techniques, supporting the innovation and improvement of major Chinese medicine varieties, and building well-known Chinese medicine brands.

The opinions also highlighted the need to elevate the development level of the Chinese medicinal materials industry by advancing modern seed breeding for medicinal herbs, promoting ecological planting and breeding of Chinese medicinal materials, strengthening the construction of circulation and reserve systems for medicinal materials, enhancing market management, and improving the price regulation mechanism for Chinese medicinal materials.

Regarding drug pricing, the opinions proposed advancing the value assessment and utilization of Chinese medicines, developing foundation models for evaluating the clinical efficacy of Chinese medicine, and facilitating the transformation of human-use experience into clinical evidence.

In the meantime, it advocated strengthening the allocation and use of Chinese medicines, optimizing centralized procurement and tendering policies for Chinese medicines, and achieving premium pricing for high-quality products.