Management guideline for the off-label use of medicine in China (2021)

Off-label drug use embodies a thorough clinical diagnosis and evaluation of treatment needs and should not be confused with unreasonable drug use, but it also faces potential risks with drug safety and legal issues.

We first established a guideline working group. Following the guideline development process recommended by the World Health Organization Handbook and the Chinese Medical Association, the key questions were determined through literature searches of PubMed, CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure) and other databases. Both the evidence and the clinicians' diagnosis and treatment workload were considered to formulate the initial recommendations. Finally, two rounds of Delphi surveys and one expert seminar were organized to determine the final recommendations of this guideline. Meanwhile, we graded the recommendations based on the body of evidence.

We determined nine questions and proposed a total of 23 recommendations regarding the definition of off-label use of drugs, applicable circumstances, classification of evidence, informed consent, legal basis, adverse drug reaction monitoring and evaluation, management procedure, responsibilities and obligations of different stakeholders, medical insurance reimbursement, and the national approval system.

This guideline standardized clinical off-label drug use and provided suggestions and references for the management of off-label drug use.