The Information Office of Shanghai Municipality held a municipal government press conference today (July 15). Zong Ming, Vice Mayor of Shanghai, introduced the 14th five-year plan for Shanghai’s health care development. Wu Jinglei, Director of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, Xia Kejia, Director of the Shanghai Municipal Healthcare Security Administration, and Zhu Qigao, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission also attended the press conference and answered the questions by journalists.

1. General Consideration of the Plan Compilation

By adhering to a health-first strategy, Shanghai pursues a high-quality development in health care. The city aims to further optimize its health care system, improve professionals’ overall medical skills, boost health care service capacity, expand citizens’ medical insurance benefits, promote the integrated development in health care in the Yangtze River Delta region, and protect people’s health and safety at all stages of life.

By 2020, the major health indicators in Shanghai are similar to those in developed countries and regions. Local citizens’ average life expectancy reached 83.67 years old. The city’s infant mortality rate was 0.266%, and the maternal mortality ratio was 3.66 out of 100,000. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Shanghai issued seven regulations to construct a more resilient public health system. The regulations have optimized the city’s command system in case of a public health emergency and strengthened other systems, including monitoring and , medical treatment, scientific research, and material support. They have helped protect the city and the nation as a whole from the pandemic.

2. Targets of Shanghai’s 14th Five-year Plan for Health Care

Shanghai will pursue a high-quality development in health care to lay a solid foundation for building a city of, by, and for the people. The compilation of the plan follows four aspects of developmental philosophy:

(1) Shanghai will adhere to the mindset of people-first and life-first to shift the focus of health care from disease treatment to health maintenance. The city will promote health equality and protect people’s health with no spare effort.

(2) Shanghai will adhere to the mindset of systematic governance by integrating all available resources to construct a stronger health care system and by enabling the general public to share the construction achievements. As a significant part of the city’s governance, officials will take health into account when they draft all policies. In this way, all walks of life will contribute to building better health care governance.

(3) Shanghai will adhere to the mindset of directing health care to serve the city and the country’s developmental strategies. Shanghai’s future development in health care will address the challenges of the demographic change and promote medical innovation to boost the city’s competitiveness.

(4) Shanghai will adhere to the mindset of pursuing excellence, reform, and innovation. The city will follow the highest global standards to fulfill people’s unmet needs for health care. It will continue to deepen reform to ensure a vigorous development in health care.

Shanghai has drawn up three general targets for its health care development from 2021 to 2025:

(1) Shanghai will build a people-first high-quality health care system.

(2) Shanghai will build the city into a health care innovation center with worldwide influence and a global model of a healthy city.

(3) building the city into one with the strongest public health system in the world.

Shanghai has also made seven sub-targets for its health care development from 2021 to 2025:

(1) Citizens’ will enjoy better health. Their health literacy will reach above 36%. 37% of malignant tumors will be detected in early diagnosis. The average healthy life expectancy will exceed 71 years old.

(2) Shanghai will optimize its health care system. The city will basically complete the construction of a modernized disease control and prevention system. Its capacity to respond to a pandemic and public health incidence will be one of the strongest in the world. People will enjoy better services at regional health care centers. A suitable, comprehensive, and continuous community health care system will be basically established.

(3) Shanghai will establish a better reputation for its health care services, with stronger innovation capability, together with several leading medical subjects in China that are also renowned in the world. The city will improve its ability to diagnose and treat major difficult diseases.

(4) Shanghai will expand the scale of its health care services and improve their quality. Health care will become a pillar industry of the city.

(5) Shanghai will build a smarter health care system and become a leading city to provide smart health care services.

(6) Shanghai will build a multi-tiered medical insurance system to provide citizens with more benefits.

(7) Shanghai will improve its health care governance and basically complete the construction of a smart supervision system.

The 14th five-year plan for health care also proposes 19 developmental targets, such as average life expectancy, the rate of detecting major malignant tumors in early diagnosis, hospital bed reserve, and the proportion of rehabilitating patients who use online health care services.

3. Key Tasks of Health Care Development from 2021 to 2025

The plan proposes 12 key tasks in four aspects of Shanghai’s health care development from 2021 to 2025. Officials will attach greater importance to ensure that health care will better serve the city’s development. They will also attach greater importance to developing the public health system, expanding the accessibility of premium medical resources with a more balanced distribution, digitalizing health care services, and promoting institutional innovation.

The first aspect of Shanghai’s health care development plan from 2021 to 2025 is to strengthen public health governance. This aspect includes two key tasks:

(1) Shanghai will continue to build a modernized public health system, a modernized disease control and prevention system, and a strong health education and popularization system. The city will also promote personalized health care management and build a psychological service network to cover all the people at all stages of life. Shanghai will carry on the patriotic health campaign and take health into consideration in all policymaking.

(2) Shanghai will boost its capability to manage public health emergencies. The city will optimize the emergency command system, strengthen the ability to monitor, analyze, , and respond to emergencies, improve the ability of medical treatment, offer stronger material support, and refine social governance.

The second aspect of Shanghai’s health care development plan from 2021 to 2025 is to serve people’s pursuit of higher quality of life. This aspect includes three key tasks:

(1) Shanghai will build a high-quality health care system by promoting integrated, smart, and globalized services. Shanghai will make sure that hospitals at all levels could best exercise their functions, and that the accessibility of premium medical resources could be expanded with balanced distribution. The city will accelerate the allocation of health care resources in new cities. It will also improve the quality of health care services by better implementing stratified health care.

(2) Shanghai’s health care development will be need-oriented. Pregnant women, infants, children, physically impaired people, low-income groups, and senior residents can expect to enjoy better and more accessible health care services.

(3) Shanghai will promote the inheritance and innovation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with local characteristics. The city will optimize the network of TCM services. It will also promote community-based inheritance and innovation in different schools of TCM practices to improve TCM services.

The third aspect of Shanghai’s health care development plan from 2021 to 2025 is to serve national strategy and city development. This aspect includes three key tasks:

(1) Shanghai will adhere to digital-driven innovation in health care. The city will promote the integration of medical science and other subjects when it comes to health care innovation. Shanghai will strengthen research in public health, develop digitalized and high-quality clinical research, and make it easier to transfer the research findings for practical use. By 2025, Shanghai will become a leader in China and Asia in terms of the construction of clinical research platforms, the scale of clinical experiments, and the compilation of clinical treatment guidelines.

(2) The development in health care will serve national and regional development strategies. Shanghai will promote the coordinated development in health care in the Yangtze River Delta region by deepening regional cooperation in public health, medical service coordination, and medical insurance integration. The city will promote open and innovative development in health care in the Lingang New Area of Shanghai’s Pilot Free Trade Zone. Shanghai will also serve the national strategy of contributing to the health care causes in underdeveloped regions.

(3) Shanghai will pursue a high-quality development in health care services. It will accelerate the development of health care industry cluster areas and cultivate new business formats such as online health care and medical tourism.

The fourth aspect of Shanghai’s health care development plan from 2021 to 2025 is to optimize health care governance. This aspect includes four key tasks:

(1) Shanghai will promote institutional reform and innovation to strengthen policy coordination and the interaction among medical, medical insurance, and pharmaceutical reforms. The city will implement categorized management of public hospitals and optimize the compensation mechanism. It will also guide the development of public hospitals by elevating the proportions of research finding transfer, international medical service, and health care management in their overall income.

(2) Shanghai will improve the multi-tiered medical insurance system. It will build a stable and mature medical insurance system that is consist of basic medical insurance, medical assistance, supplementary medical insurance, commercial health insurance, charitable donation, and medical mutual assistance.

(3) Shanghai will accelerate the cultivation of health care talents, drive the innovative development of medical education, promote the integration of medical education with engineering, science, and arts, and attach greater importance to the cultivation of top-notch multi-disciplinary talents with a medical background. The city will also accelerate the training of talents in short supply and muster more innovative and global talents.

(4) Shanghai will deepen the reform of streamlining administration, delegating government power, and optimizing government services to promote comprehensive supervision across the entire health care industry. The supervision will become more intelligent, more standardized, and more accurate.

Shanghai will spare no effort to implement the 14th five-year plan for health care development so that it can make a bigger contribution to building the city into “five centers” and a modernized socialist metropolis with global influence, and to improving the health of Shanghai citizens.