Chinese Government Tips Scales for Homegrown Orthopedics

Medical device companies hoping to do business in China will meet increased competition from homegrown products, according to Emily Wasserman, writing for the online journal Fierce Medical Devices. The Chinese Health Ministry, condemning “unreasonable increases” in the cost of foreign-made products, is urging local hospitals to use Chinese-made devices. Global device makers are now reported to dominate three-quarters of China’s $34.51 billion medical device market.

Reuters News Service quoted Li Bin, the head of China’s National Health and Family Planning commission, as saying, “We want to strongly advocate health ministry organizations to use domestically-made medical devices, especially pushing top level class III hospitals to use domestically-made products.”

According to Wasserman, China’s medical device sector “is set to double to more than $50 billion by 2020 and McKinsey and Company “expects annual growth rates of around 20% for the next few years.“

One company, Shanghai’s Kinetic Medical, claims to have a 50% share in China just two years after filling its IPO. Another Chinese company, Mindray, saw a 3.4% gain in sales over last year. Wasserman quotes Mindray’s chief investment officer May Li saying that, “Private hospitals will account for 20% of all national healthcare services in China by 2015 compared to the current level of just 9%.”