National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), China, has begun laying the groundwork for a Unique Device Identification (UDI) pilot program scheduled to run through July 2020.NMPA will carry out the pilot in collaboration with the National Health Care Security Administration (NHCSA) as well as the National Institutes of Medical Device Standards Management.

Medical device manufacturers will create UDI numbers according to UDI system rules and standards, assign UDIs to their products, and upload UDI information to a UDI database under development.

Distributors will set up workflows for application of UDI to commercial operations, verify parallel operations for multiple codes, and determine docking operation processes for UDI data and business systems.

Users will manage docking of UDI data to medical business systems, as well as develop and examine connections between UDI, medical device and clinical applications.