In brief
In April and May 2026, Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority (HSA) announced collaborations with its Japan and China regulatory counterparts respectively.
With China’s National Medical Products Administration, HSA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on 11 May 2026 to accelerate access to new health products in both countries. The MOU expands regulatory cooperation and strengthens collaboration in building facilitative regulatory pathways, pilot innovative schemes, capacity building and staff exchanges.
With Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, HSA signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) on 20 April 2026 to enhance bilateral cooperation in health products regulation. This includes facilitating reliance for health products, Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspection reliance of pharmaceutical manufacturers, information exchange on cutting-edge technology, and partnerships in international initiatives.
These collaborations follow HSA’s similar announcements with regulatory counterparts from South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the UK. Further details may be found in our article here.
Key takeaways
HSA’s active engagements with its regulatory counterparts in various countries shows HSA’s commitment to enhance regulatory collaboration and access to health products in Singapore in Singapore. It also illustrates that HSA seeks to continue its position as a globally trusted regulatory hub for healthcare innovation.
Given HSA’s position and increasing collaboration with overseas regulators, industry players should continue monitoring regulatory developments from HSA, which may have a knock-on effect on overseas regulations as well.
In more detail
HSA's MOU with China
Building on a 2021 agreement, the renewed MOU expands the scope of collaboration to new emerging areas of medical innovation such as cell, tissue and gene therapy products, which HSA states is a “rapidly growing area of medical innovation”.
This expanded partnership strengthens regulatory convergence and industry engagement. It enables more efficient development and market access pathways for the new innovative therapeutics and medical technologies. Both agencies will continue collaborating to combat counterfeit, falsified and substandard health products, including inspections of manufacturing facilities and testing.
HSA's MOC with Japan
The MOC establishes GMP inspection reliance arrangements that support mutual reliance of GMP certificates and inspection outcomes for pharmaceutical manufacturers in both countries. This is expected to remove an average of three duplicative inspections per year for manufacturers. In streamlining regulatory processes, access to safe medicines is expected to improve by up to six months in both countries.
The MOC also enables formal collaboration across the full product lifecycle – from clinical trials review, product reviews, registration and reliance, manufacturing through to post-market oversight. This strengthens regulatory reliance and supports innovation for medicines, cell, tissue and gene therapy products and medical devices.
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