China Calls For
Greater Use Of Homegrown Medical Devices
China may use incentives to
encourage domestic hospitals to use Chinese-made medical devices as it looks to
stimulate the local market and reduce soaring healthcare costs, a potential
threat to the global firms who currently dominate the sector.
China will speed up the
development of its medical device industry and promote wider use of local
products to “effectively control unreasonable increases in the cost of medical
care and reduce the burden on patients,” the country’s health ministry said in a
statement posted on its website on Monday.
The overt backing by Beijing for
homegrown medical devices will raise protectionism concerns and is a headache
for the global companies attracted to China by annual growth rates McKinsey & Co
expect at around 20 percent over the next few years.
Global medical device makers,
especially from the United States, Europe and Japan, now dominate around
threequarters of China’s medical device market, which was worth 212 billion yuan
($34.51 billion) last year, according to figures from the Hong Kong Trade and
Development Council (HKTDC).
“We want to strongly advocate
health ministry organisations to use domestically-made medical devices,
especially pushing top level class III hospitals to use domestically-made
products,” the statement said, citing Li Bin, the head of China’s National
Health and Family Planning Commission.
A number of recent investigations
by Chinese authorities into foreign firms like Microsoft Corp and car companies
including Audi AG and Chrysler have sparked concerns that Beijing may be using
legal muscle to support domestic firms at the expense of foreign companies.
Miao Wei, the head of China’s
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said in the same
statement that China needed to raise the level and quality of its homegrown
medical devices and create incentives for medical institutions to use
locally-made products.
Hospitals are the biggest
distribution channel for medical devices, accounting for almost 80 percent of
the market, according to HKTDC figures. There were around 13,400 public
hospitals in China last year, and a further 11,300 private hospitals, according
to a June report from Deutsche Bank.
Ref:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/08/18/china-medicaldevicesidINL4N0QO34020140818
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