Medical Device Industry Has Become the Convergence Point of Sci-tech Innovation

Release Time:2018-04-28Views:175

Based on the Chinese Health Industry Blue Paper released by China Medical Informatics Association in 2016, medical device industry is the field with the most rapid growth in the health industry, and has become one of the most optimistic investment hotspots in the capital market. In 2015, the total volume of medical device market achieved RMB 300 billion, which would be doubled by 2019 after general specification for medical devices.

As the basic industry to support the current medical health system reform, medical device industry has become a hot industry, the entire market scale of which is continuously expanding, but as a medical device circulation industry, it is generally characterized by being scattered, disordered and inefficient. With the strengthening of public health system and urban communities & rural grass-roots medical system construction year by year, the strong demand requires the enterprises of medical device circulation industry to make innovation on the service quality, service range and mode.

In 2015, the medical device industry achieved the sales revenue of RMB 226.8 billion, with an increase of 6.18% on a year-on-year basis; there would be business opportunity of more than RMB 100 billion every year in the tumor marker preliminary examination in the precision medicine. In recent years, the domestic medical device market has been developing rapidly, and many new enterprises have been emerging.

New requirements for the new technology in the new medical reform

As mentioned by Wang Dongjin, Contract Research Fellow of Advisory Office of State Council and Chairman of China Health Insurance Research Association, at present, China is in a critical period of building a moderately well-off society in an all-round way. The national strategy of Health China raised in the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee is the important content of building a moderately well-off society in an all-round way. The objective of Health China is to enable all people to enjoy the fair basic medical service and the basic medical security.

He introduced the achievements in the following aspects since the new medical reform in 2009: First, it has taken a dozen years only to achieve the medical security for nearly 1.3 billion people, where the national medical reform covers the population in the urban and rural areas, providing system safeguard for implementing the strategy of "Health China". Second, the national medical security level has been constantly increasing, where the personal hygiene expenditure fell from 61% in 2001 to 29.97% in 2015, the lowest in the past 20 years, significantly relieving the problem of high cost of getting medical treatment reflected by the public. Third, the public finance has been increasing the investment in the medical insurance, where the total expenditure on the national health was more than RMB 4 trillion in 2015, including the subsidy for the medical insurance of urban and rural residents, which was increased from RMB 40 per person initially to RMB 420 per person. Fourth, the medical insurance fund has been constantly expanded for the constantly strengthened security capacity, where the national medical insurance fund was expanded from RMB 6 billion in 1998 to RMB 1.42 trillion in 2015 by 200 times. Fifth, the national medical insurance has been assisting the poverty alleviation, relieving the poverty due to illness, and accelerating the pace of poverty alleviation. Sixth, the comprehensive medical insurance has improved the health of the people, where the national expected average life expectancy was up to 76.34 years in 2015, increased by 1.54 years when compared to that in 2010.

In recent years, the biotechnology has been constantly revealing the life mystery, and the new method, the stem cell technology, the cell aging delay technology and the brain science have brought great benefits for human understanding of life mystery and for precision implementation of painless treatment to maintain health. Meanwhile, it is predicted that the TCM will depend on the innovation and rely on the market to obtain new development, and the significant vaccine and technology R&D will drive the medical industry to become a 100 billion industry. It will save the medical expenditure of RMB 500 billion for the patients every year. Mobile medical care will become the modern barefoot doctor to solve the shortage of medical services and supplies in the grass roots.

In his view, opportunities and challenges coexist, and due to the systematic obstacles, structural contradictions and policy-oriented constraints, the independent innovation vitality of China has not been fully developed. The independent innovation ability is still not commensurate with the great country status of China, unable to adapt to the needs of four comprehensive strategic layouts, with more prominent contradictions and gaps in the medical device field. The medical institutions are filled with "foreign equipment and foreign machine" in the medical device market.

"To make medical device R&D innovation, we should firstly start from the needs for the strategy of Health China based on the national conditions of China, with comprehensive consideration and overall planning, which cannot be deemed as a purely professional technical problem, and we cannot make innovation for innovation. Therefore, we must know well and handle correctly the relationship between the high-end medical device R&D innovation and other various aspects, and then twice as much can be accomplished with half the effort."