BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — The Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Science, Technology and Innovation and the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Justice have opened public consultation on draft Regulations on Promoting Innovative Development of the Brain-Computer Interface Industry in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.The draft defines a brain-computer interface as technology that establishes an information channel between the brain and external devices to achieve coordinated interaction between biological and machine intelligence. On government duties, the outlet quotes the draft as stating that the municipal government shall incorporate BCI industry development into the city’s national economic and social development plan and its science and technology innovation plan, shall sustain investment in basic research, and shall support enterprises in forming innovation consortia with universities and research institutes to tackle core technologies.
Data and ethics take up a substantial part of the draft. That processing brain data and other sensitive personal information would require separate written consent from the individual, with strict compliance on cross-border data transfer rules. The same report summarizes further provisions: a graded and classified supervision mechanism for clinical research, academic and ethics review for sponsoring institutions, mutual recognition of ethics reviews, and industrial support measures covering incubators, tiered enterprise cultivation, first-procurement catalogues and a fast track for medical insurance listing.
