ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
Cross-jurisdictional access to innovative drugs and devices: a five-year policy and practice review of the Hong Kong and Macao medicine and equipment connect in the Greater Bay Area of China.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Launched in 2020, the "Hong Kong and Macao Medicine and Equipment Connect" (HKMEC) policy introduced a novel delegated-authority model in China's Greater Bay Area (GBA), enabling designated hospitals to use Hong Kong- or Macao-approved drugs and devices through Guangdong provincial approval, thereby bypassing standard National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) registration. To synthesize five-year implementation evidence, this review followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines and systematically searched Chinese (CNKI, Wanfang, VIP) and English (PubMed, Embase, ScienceDirect) databases covering 2020 to May 2026, supplemented by official documents. By early 2026, the in-use catalog comprised 115 products (45 drugs and 70 devices), while cumulative approvals reached 140 products across 71 institutions, serving more than 17,000 documented patient encounters (as of December 2025; Guangdong Provincial Health Commission, 8 December 2025), mainly in the fields of oncology, rare diseases, and chronic disease. While reliance on external approvals accelerated access, challenges remain, including fragmented real-world data (RWD) infrastructure, self-pay barriers, institutional disparities, and limited cross-border integration. Overall, HKMEC demonstrates a pragmatic delegated regulatory governance model with implications for subnational and transnational pathways, although three priority tasks remain: establishing a regulation-grade RWD platform, advancing financing reforms beyond self-pay, and pursuing substantive collaboration with Hong Kong and Macao. Sustained evidence-driven iteration will be essential to transform this pilot into a robust, scalable model bridging accelerated access and formal regulatory approval.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.