National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA)
China's national medical insurance administration. It created a separate pricing category for brain-computer interface procedures in 2025 and gave Neuracle's approved implant an insurance code two days after its March 2026 approval.
Overview
The National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) runs China’s basic medical insurance system and the pricing framework hospitals use to bill procedures. For brain-computer interfaces it controls the payment side of commercialisation: whether a procedure can be billed, at what guided price, and whether a device carries an insurance code.
What it has done on BCI
In March 2025 the NHSA created a separate project category for BCI procedures, taking them out of general device reimbursement. Guided prices reported by Chinese state media in April 2026 put invasive BCI implantation at RMB 6,000 to 6,600 per procedure, with Sichuan, Hubei and Zhejiang attaching provincial fee schedules.
On 15 March 2026, two days after the NMPA approved Neuracle’s NEO-ONE SCI, the NHSA assigned the device a medical insurance code. Huashan Hospital in Shanghai filed its own insurance pricing on 28 April and began commercial implants on 13 July 2026.
Latest
National coverage of the device itself is still absent. Neuracle disclosed on 29 September 2026 that NEO-ONE SCI is listed at RMB 475,000 per set on procurement platforms in 27 provinces and is in no basic medical insurance catalogue. The one named source of cover is Shanghai’s city-backed commercial insurance scheme, Huhuibao, which from its policy year starting 1 July 2026 pays 30 per cent of the listed price for eligible inpatients, up to RMB 150,000 a year. Neuracle has not said whether patients, hospitals or insurers paid for the 13 systems it had sold by late September.
Why it matters
China moved from device approval to insurance coding in two days. The United States has no equivalent: CMS has no dedicated coding, coverage or payment framework for implantable BCIs. The next tests are whether NEO-ONE SCI enters a basic insurance catalogue and whether the same coding and pricing carry over to the next approved hand-function implant.
Coverage on InsideBCI
- 23 April 2026: China issues guided pricing for invasive BCI procedures as provinces begin reimbursement roll-out
- 3 June 2026: Neuralink hires its first federal lobbyists to open the brain-computer interface coverage account
- 16 July 2026: China performs first commercial Neuracle NEO implant
- 1 October 2026: Neuracle has sold 13 brain implants at a listed RMB 475,000 each since July
- 2 October 2026: NeuroXess participant uses his brain implant to steer AI from sketch to 3D-printed figurine