China's top health authority will issue within the next month a national regulation requiring transplant hospitals to use a computer-based organ allocation system, senior health officials revealed on Friday.

Under the new directive on human organ procurement and allocation, those who don't distribute donations via the system, called the China Organ Transplant Response System, will be punished, or even have their licenses revoked, warned Huang Jiefu, director of the China Organ Donation Committee and former vice-minister of health.

Only organs donated by the general public after death fall under the new regulation.