BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — On July 7, 2026, the Shandong Provincial Health Commission in eastern China and 15 other agencies issued a work plan to accelerate clinical translation and application of brain-computer interfaces. It is Shandong’s second BCI policy document; the first, led by the provincial science and technology department, came out more than a year earlier.
The first document, numbered Lu Kezi [2025] No. 50, was issued on May 13, 2025 by the science department and 12 other agencies and covers 2025 to 2027. The second, numbered Lu Weiyizi [2026] No. 13, contains 14 measures.
The two documents work in relay. The 2025 plan runs to 2027, aiming for about 20 breakthroughs in frontier and core technologies, about 30 technology-based small and medium-sized firms, two to three high-level talent teams and one to two incubation parks. The health commission’s plan carries over the 2027 technology and company targets unchanged and adds milestones for 2028 and 2030.
An industry agency tends to think in terms of building companies, making products and opening markets. A health agency thinks in terms of identifying clinical needs, organizing studies, validating efficacy and entering treatment guidelines. Medical BCIs are held back on the evidence side, with unclear indications, no consensus on efficacy measures and multicenter data that cannot be pooled, and these are problems a health system has to organize.
The first four measures address this directly: a BCI clinical research alliance; regular publication of clinical needs in mental health, neurological disorders and rehabilitation; standardized procedures for participant screening, experimental paradigms, rehabilitation protocols and efficacy assessment; and multimodal standardized datasets with a provincial clinical database.
Hospitals currently use different inclusion criteria, task paradigms and rating scales, so results cannot be compared or aggregated into strong evidence. Once procedures are standardized, multicenter data can be merged and the provincial database has something to hold.
On translation and funding, the plan builds a provincial proof-of-concept center at the Jinan International Medical Center and a pilot base offering prototype testing and scale-up. A startup competition adds a BCI track linked to the Taishan talent program, offering RMB 500,000 in seed funding and up to RMB 15 million in equity investment.
The easiest measure to check is review time: Class II medical devices will be reviewed within 90 working days. Class II devices, which cover non-invasive rehabilitation training, assessment and intervention products, are approved at the provincial level, so the drug administration can set this commitment itself without new budget. Nine days later, Zhejiang pledged 40 working days or less.
The targets build year by year. In 2026 the alliance is to be formed and the first validation projects launched. By 2028 the alliance should have at least 30 members, more than 20 domestic or foreign companies or teams should set up validation bases or joint labs in Shandong, and more than 30 multicenter validation projects should be completed.
Also by 2028, the province’s BCI industry should reach RMB 2 billion, with one to two chain-leading companies and more than ten specialized smaller firms. By 2030 Shandong aims to build a national BCI clinical validation and industry cluster with the reach captured in its slogan, validated in Shandong, applied globally.
Shandong’s advantage is patients. It has one of China’s largest numbers of top-tier hospitals and a large population, with ample cases in stroke rehabilitation, neurodegenerative disease and mental health, the main BCI indications. Core component companies are few, and the 2025 plan’s goal of about 30 technology-based smaller firms reflects the existing base.
Payment is the gap. The plan calls for improved payment policies and the provincial healthcare security bureau co-signed it, but as of August 2026 no Shandong BCI service price items had been found. Hainan, Qinghai and Xinjiang, which have no BCI industry documents, have already published prices.
Two things will show whether the plan works: whether the alliance publishes needs lists and produces multicenter studies, and how long the first products actually take under the 90-working-day commitment.