BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — In March 2025, China’s National Healthcare Security Administration issued a pricing guideline for neurological medical services that created three separate fee items for brain-computer interfaces, leaving each province to publish its own prices. Hubei, a province in central China, was the first to do so, even though it has no provincial policy document named after BCI.
The pricing notice, numbered E Yibao Fa [2025] No. 19, was issued by the Hubei Provincial Healthcare Security Administration and the Hubei Provincial Health Commission and took effect on March 31, 2025. It sets invasive implantation at RMB 6,552, invasive removal at RMB 3,139 and non-invasive fitting at RMB 966 per session.
The notice was dated March 30, 2025 and published and implemented on March 31. All three are provincial maximum prices that may not be raised but may be lowered. Surgical items carry a 20% surcharge for children aged six and under. Chargeable BCI systems are sold at purchase cost without markup, and implantation and removal may not both be charged for the same operation.
The three figures became a reference point. Zhejiang later set RMB 6,580, RMB 3,150 and RMB 960, differing by only RMB 28, RMB 11 and RMB 6, which suggests the national guideline’s cost basis had a practical effect.
In November 2025, China’s first BCI operation charged under the government guidance price was performed in Wuhan, which the National Healthcare Security Administration disclosed on its website in December. The operation used the formally published medical service price items.
Hubei’s BCI measures are spread across several levels. A June 2024 provincial plan to accelerate future industries for 2024 to 2026 listed BCI as a priority in future health; the same year, BCI projects entered the province’s catalog for first-of-a-kind high-end medical equipment; and Wuhan named BCI one of its 13 future industries.
In August 2025 the Hubei BCI Industry Alliance was established. In October the Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone issued measures to support BCI industry innovation, offering funding and policy support in five areas from technology development to commercialization. In January 2026 the provincial intellectual property office published a patent navigation report on key BCI technologies.
A park administration can adopt policy on its own, while a provincial document must coordinate a dozen departments, giving the East Lake zone a shorter decision chain. The healthcare security bureau priced BCI services without a provincial plan to rely on, responding directly to the national guideline. Wuhan’s Tongji and Union hospital systems have strong neurosurgery capabilities, a precondition for the first operation.
The lack of provincial coordination has costs. Hubei’s activity is concentrated in Wuhan, especially the East Lake zone, with little involvement from other cities. Guangdong assigns roles to Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other Pearl River Delta cities, and Jiangsu plans at least two provincial clusters; Hubei has no such layer. Its future industry plan is entirely directional, leaving no benchmark for evaluation.
Reimbursement lags. The annex to notice No. 19 has a price column but no insurance payment category column, and Hubei has not brought BCI services into basic medical insurance payment. It sits with Guangdong, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Hainan, Qinghai and Xinjiang among regions that have prices but no coverage, behind only Zhejiang and Beijing.
Pricing requires a cost calculation; insurance coverage requires fund capacity and efficacy evidence. With prices and an operation on record, Hubei is better placed than most provinces, and if it moves it would be the third to bring BCI into insurance payment.
Three questions remain: whether Hubei adds a provincial BCI policy document, how many operations Wuhan performs each year after the first, and whether the East Lake zone’s measures are raised to provincial policy.