The authority’s chief pharmacist, William Chui Chun-ming, said on Thursday that doctors would no longer need to go through the assessment in their own hospitals and could directly approach the head office to introduce new drugs from mid-November.

“The two-tier assessment may have slowed down the process. We consider it unnecessary,” Chui said on a radio show.

“Instead, we can centralize the evaluation… It will only take five months to introduce a new drug into the formulary. »

According to the current evaluation system, it takes approximately 10 months to integrate a new drug into the formulary of public hospitals.

Pharmaceutical companies require doctors to submit an application, which is submitted to public hospitals for review before reaching the authority’s headquarters.

Under the new system, the authority will also accept applications from companies without going through doctors.