Medical device innovation drives Wuxi's growth

Huge market demand for better medical care and support policies is expected to drive China's medical device industry, especially high-end products, to unprecedented growth.

With a strong industrial base and advanced manufacturing industry, Wuxi in East China's Jiangsu province has long been one of the leading innovative cities in the country.

The city has already become an important research and manufacturing base of medical device, especially ultrasonic instruments and medical film.

The medical device industry in Wuxi has been growing at an average of 20 percent annually for more than a decade.

So far, the city has 192 medical device manufacturers, with more than 771 medical device product registration certificates.

The city also has more than 2,200 device operation enterprises.

In 2015, the city's total industrial output value of medical device industry reached 7.49 billion yuan ($1.15 billion), and its sales income was 8.52 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 4 percent of the country's total, according to data from the local government.

The medical device industry in Wuxi covers fields from large medical electric devices to invitro diagnostic reagents, and representative products including ultrasonic devices, anesthesia machines, bone mineral density screening instruments, CT tubes, nasal gastric tubes, safety syringes, biological proteins and teeth invisalign devices.

The annual output value of these products exceeds 5 billion yuan, and about 80 percent of all high-end products are exported to Europe, the United States and other developed countries, an official said.

A number of global medical device companies have set up bases in Wuxi, such as GE Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, Paramount Bed, Nutricia and Sysmex.

Because of its talents and logistics advantages, Wuxi has grown into GE's global core research and development base and China's most important and competitive manufacturing base.

About one-third of GE's type-B ultrasonic products come from Wuxi, with their sales exceeding 3 billion yuan.

GE Healthcare China (Wuxi Medical) has been in the city for about two decades, and has played a vanguard role in promoting local innovation and boosting regional economic development.

"During that development, the local government has given us strong policy and fund support, such as talent subsidies, innovation incentives and convenient administrative services, which allow us to have a deeper growth here," said Zhao Weidong, chairman of the Board of Directors at GE Healthcare China (Wuxi Medical).

Entrepreneurship

Over the years, Wuxi has released a series of favorable policies to support the industry's development and, as early as 2007, sought to attract global talent.

By now, more than 1,000 talented people from the healthcare industry have come to Wuxi to start businesses with innovative projects.

Hisky Med, a rapidly growing company that specializes in R&D, application and marketing of cutting-edge acoustic technology in the healthcare industry, includes FibroTouch,the world's first image-guided non-invasive liver fibrosis diagnostic system and fatty liver quantification system.

Such systems can complete a liver examination in two minutes and give quantitative results of liver fibrosis and severity of fatty level immediately, which helps early detection, early prevention of liver diseases and enables the early treatment of chronic liver diseases, according to the company. "At the early stage of our company's development, which was also the hardest time, local government provided special support, such as work space free of rent for three years, free accommodation for talented employees, nearly 1 million yuan in a starting fund, as well as other related training and guidance," said Shao Jinhua, general manager of Hisky Med.

One of China's largest producers and service provider of invisible teeth braces, Angel Align, is specialized in R&D of oral invisible orthodontic treatments technology, as well as the production and sales of invisible teeth braces.

Founded in 2003, the company has brought a revolutionary innovation technology in orthodontic treatment field, which combines computer science, biomechanics, clinical orthodontics, 3D printing technology and material science.

"We have a special medical service team that helps form the core competitiveness of the company, and will provide a complete technology solutions and services," said Li Huamin, general manager of the company.

The company now has more than 50 patents and it is planning to expand to overseas market, Li said.

wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn