Under Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act (PMD Act), foreign companies that intend to manufacture drugs, quasi-drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) or medical devices overseas and import them into Japan must be registered with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW).... Read More
In March 2018, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced that China will reduce tariffs on imported cancer drugs to zero percent. The plan should give a boost to global drug makers such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, and Roche by making their treatments more... Read More
Japan raised the share of generic drugs used in the country to 65.8 percent as of September 2017, putting it on course to reach its target of 80 percent by 2020. The switch to generics from brand-name drugs reduced medical costs by... Read More
Government reforms in recent years have laid the foundation for robust growth in Japan’s pharmaceutical sector. A report by pharma event company CPhI predicted that 2018 would be a “transformative” year for the pharmaceutical industry in Japan. The CPhI Global Pharma Index—a... Read More
China’s Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) completed 9,680 drug filings in 2017, slashing the backlog of filings to 4,000 from a high of 22,000 in September 2015. A total of 394 market approvals were issued during the year, made up of 278... Read More
Malaysia’s healthcare sector is set to grow at an average rate of 8.4 percent over the next six years, having almost doubled since 2012 to reach an expected 11.3 billion ringgit ($2.9 billion) in 2018, consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan reported in... Read More
China’s government plans to expand health insurance for catastrophic illnesses to cover more than 20 million people by the end of 2018, Premier Li Keqiang announced in March 2018. More than 17 million people were covered by the program at the end... Read More
In March 2018, China’s National People’s Congress approved plans for the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) to be merged into a newly formed National Market Supervision Administration, part of an overhaul of ministries. A new State Drug Administration under the merged... Read More
Japan is emerging as a world leader in the development of regenerative medicine, which refers to therapy products that replace or restore cells and tissues lost to disease or aging. A series of reforms have helped sparked a “regen” boom in the... Read More
Up until now, China has only had a few Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs), and they have not been a factor in China’s healthcare scheme. However, in February 2018, China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MoHRSS) released a list of 130 diseases... Read More