National People's Congress Deputy Xu Haoyu: Build a quality assurance system for traditional Chinese medicine and promote the assetization of medical data

How to address the issue of adulteration and mixing of raw Chinese medicinal materials? With medical data growing exponentially, why are most still “dormant”?

Recently, Xu Haoyu, a National People’s Congress representative who has long been engaged in the frontline of the pharmaceutical industry, Chairman and President of Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group, shared his suggestions in his second year of serving.

Based on his practical experience and extensive research in the industry, Xu Haoyu proposed recommendations on accelerating the construction of a quality credit assurance system for the entire Chinese medicine industry chain and promoting the assetization of medical data, aiming to lay a solid foundation for the construction of a Healthy China.

Strengthening the Industry’s “Root and Pulse”: Safeguarding the Quality Lifeline of Chinese Medicine from the Source

Traditional Chinese medicine is a treasure of the Chinese nation, and the quality of Chinese medicinal materials is the foundation for its inheritance and development.

However, Xu Haoyu found during his research that although the scale of the Chinese medicinal materials industry continues to expand, cultivation levels are improving, and progress has been made in traceability systems, issues such as adulteration and mixing of raw materials still occur from time to time.

“The quality of Chinese medicinal materials directly relates to the safety of public medication and the vitality of the industry. We need not only to develop quantity but also to optimize and improve quality,” Xu Haoyu emphasized.

He discovered that scattered farming models, inconsistent standards enforcement, lagging and asymmetric market information, and insufficient supporting facilities for processing, storage, and logistics at production sites collectively form bottlenecks that restrict quality improvement in Chinese medicinal materials, affecting farmers’ stable income and rural revitalization efforts.

Based on this, Xu Haoyu suggested establishing a batch of national-level regional intelligent ecological planting demonstration zones in seven major medicinal material production areas across the country, starting from a high baseline and adopting a systematic approach to lead standardized cultivation and processing of Chinese medicinal materials.

He stressed that promoting high-quality development of the Chinese medicine industry must strengthen systemic coordination, enhance the protection and innovation of germplasm resources, accelerate the promotion of smart ecological planting models, and improve initial deep processing and logistics infrastructure at production sites. Meanwhile, it is essential to strengthen the entire chain’s quality credit grading and supervision linkage, build a nationwide integrated database of quality credit profiles for market entities, and establish mechanisms for trust incentives and dishonesty penalties. This will not only safeguard farmers’ income but also provide solid support for the sustainable development and modernization of traditional Chinese medicine industries and comprehensive rural revitalization.

Mining the “Data” Treasure Trove: Activating Industry Vitality Through Elemental Value

If quality is the solid foundation of the pharmaceutical industry, then today, swept by the wave of digitalization, data has also become a key variable driving industry innovation and development.

As a data-intensive field, the pharmaceutical industry has accumulated vast high-potential data in clinical, scientific research, and circulation aspects. However, much of this data remains scattered and “dormant,” with weak data governance foundations and insufficient value release, which to some extent restricts the industry’s digital transformation.

“Promoting the assetization of pharmaceutical data is not only a key path to implementing the national strategies of ‘Healthy China’ and ‘Digital China,’ but also an inevitable choice for cultivating new momentum in the pharmaceutical industry,” Xu Haoyu stated.

How to better unlock the value of data elements? Based on frontline practice, Xu Haoyu proposed a multi-dimensional framework for releasing the value of pharmaceutical data.

First, is to solidify the “institutional foundation” for data assetization. He believes that it is urgent to accelerate the development and improvement of data asset management systems, standards, and operational mechanisms to provide systematic institutional guarantees for data assetization across the entire chain.

Second, is to strengthen “scenario application and implementation.” He suggests innovating mechanisms for data authorization and operation, as well as value development models, to promote more high-value data products into multi-level data element markets for circulation and trading.

Third, is to accelerate the construction of a “value release community” with multi-party collaboration, promoting efficient flow of data across the entire pharmaceutical industry chain to achieve continuous value-added.

“Whether it is safeguarding the quality bottom line of Chinese medicinal materials or activating the element value of pharmaceutical data, the ultimate goal is to enable the public to enjoy higher-quality, safer, and more convenient health products and services,” Xu Haoyu said.

Yang Yan / Text

Xu Nan, Lin Chen / Editing