Large-scale equipment is ushering in a wave of renewal. How can medical device enterprises firmly grasp the opportunity?
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Medical Imaging, Surgical Robots…
Accelerating the Renewal and Transformation of Medical Equipment
On March 13th, the State Council issued the “Action Plan for Promoting the Renewal of Large-scale Equipment and the Replacement of Consumer Goods with Old Ones” (referred to as the “Action Plan” below), officially launching a new round of large-scale equipment renewal and the replacement of consumer goods with old ones.
The “Action Plan” proposes to “improve the level of education, culture, tourism, and medical equipment.” Specifically targeting the medical industry, it emphasizes the need to strengthen construction and iterative upgrading in medical and health services, as well as in the equipment and information facilities of medical and health institutions. The “Action Plan” also lists several key areas of medical equipment, emphasizing the need to “encourage qualified medical institutions to accelerate the renewal and transformation of medical equipment such as medical imaging, radiotherapy, remote diagnosis, and surgical robots.”
Medical imaging is a crucial pillar of medical diagnosis and an important branch of the medical field; radiotherapy, as one of the most concentrated areas of high-end medical equipment in China, is continuously moving towards domestic substitution to break free from the monopoly of overseas brands; remote diagnosis, as an effective means to improve the primary medical level in China, has achieved rapid development in recent years; surgical robots symbolize the high-level technology in the medical and technological fields. With the push of favorable policies and other factors, China’s surgical robots have entered a period of rapid growth in just a few years, with products in multiple fields being approved and marketed.
With the growing demand for people’s health, the market scale of the medical device industry represented by the above-mentioned sectors in China has achieved rapid expansion, and breakthrough achievements have been made in the innovation and development of large-scale medical equipment in multiple fields. According to the “Annual Report on the Registration of Medical Devices in 2023” released by the NMPA, active surgical instruments, passive implantable instruments, medical software, medical imaging equipment, and radiotherapy equipment are the top five innovative medical devices approved in 2023.
For medical institutions, especially grassroots medical institutions, the diagnostic and treatment demands they undertake are becoming increasingly complex. Therefore, the large-scale renewal of medical equipment will empower them to improve their diagnostic and treatment capabilities. For medical device enterprises, especially domestic ones, the large-scale renewal of medical equipment will be an important opportunity for them to achieve accelerated growth and unleash their potential.
In addition, the “Action Plan” also emphasizes the need to focus on addressing long-standing issues such as the industrial foundation and major technical equipment “bottlenecks” that have plagued the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and actively carry out major technical equipment technological breakthroughs.
In recent years, many regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hainan, and Jiangsu have introduced relevant policies to accelerate approval, provide financial incentives, and increase support for innovative medical devices in terms of innovation research and development, product procurement, overseas expansion of devices, and talent introduction. Seizing the opportunity of incentive policies while grasping the opportunity of large-scale renewal and transformation of medical equipment, domestic medical device enterprises are expected to further achieve domestic substitution, thereby accelerating brand growth.
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Conclusion
The “Action Plan” mentions that by 2027, investment in equipment in industries such as industry, agriculture, construction, transportation, education, culture, tourism, and healthcare will increase by more than 25% compared to 2023. With the continuous improvement of the technical level of domestic medical device enterprises and the continuous growth of market share of domestic products, China’s medical device industry and even the healthcare industry will usher in a new look.