By Zhou Jianqi & Ma Shuping, Enterprise Research Institute, DRC and Li Zhiyong, China Association of Medical Equipment

Research Report, No.176, 2020 (Total 5920) 2020-7-9

Abstract: China’s enterprises dealing in high-end medical equipment has gained international competitiveness and are shaping their momentum in leading innovations among the medium-and-upstream businesses. Currently, technological weaknesses mainly lie in the medium-and-upstream of this industrial chain. Adopting proper market incentives in the prospect of tapping into domestic demand might be conducive to expanding whole-set clinical application of domestically-made medical equipment, to ensuring stable innovation expectations for the medium-and-upstream businesses, and to shoring up points of weaknesses with concentrated advantages and resources. However, the clinical application of domestically-made high-end medical equipment has been progressing rather slow. Specifically, inadequate evaluation of products after their launch and import catalogs needing to be updated are hindering the purchase of domestically-made equipment. Supporting policies for the clinical application of such equipment is absent in China; and the traditional configurations cannot meet the needs of multiple scenes for medical application in the digital era. Therefore, it is necessary to implement evaluations after the launch of products and adjust the import catalogs correspondingly, as ways to help medical institutions with their equipment purchasing. Besides, fair competition needs to be promoted through policy guidance for building up the industrial chain while ensuring steady expectations for innovations. The configuration plans also need to be improved to expand the room for domestically-made equipment.

Keywords: high-end medical equipment, industrial chain weaknesses, market incentives, clinical application