Three global majors in the healthcare diagnostic equipment business have urged the Indian government to come up with a uniform set of guidelines for public-private partnership (PPP) in the health sector.

D Raghavan, the executive vice-president of the medical solutions division of Siemens Ltd, said that instead of different states having with different policies, there should be one standard policy framework that will take care of the public private partnership (PPP) requirement.

“We along with GE and Philips have given a representation to the government on the need for a single policy. Since health is in the concurrent list, different states have different policies,” said Raghavan.

He said the government is working on the common framework.

Raghavan was in Kolkata in connection with the first sale of Siemens’ high-end MRI machine, to Eko X-ray & Imaging Institute. The cost of the equipment, twice as powerful as the current models, is Rs 10 crore.

The Siemens Magnetom Verio is rated at 3 Tesla (Tesla is the unit that quantifies the strength of the magnet) against the 1.5 Tesla available so far, so it can do a whole-body scan in 2.5 minutes, producing sharper images.

Raghavan feels that unlike the private sector, functioning of the public hospitals is more complex in terms of buying costly equipment, providing cheaper services for the common people and the training of existing employees and clinical staff.

“A public private partnership policy should take care of all this,” said Raghavan.

Raghavan said Siemens’ medical solutions division reported a total revenue of $300 million in financial year 2007-08, and hopes to match the current market growth of 20-25%.

“Overall, we are the leader in the diagnostic equipment market, whose size is around $600-700 million,” Raghavan claimed.

Siemens hopes to sell five to ten of the Magnetom Verio model in the current fiscal.

Pradip Kr Das, Siemens manager for the east, said only two government hospitals in West Bengal have the 1.5 Tesla MRI machines. “But, in the neighbouring state of Assam all the government hospitals have 1.5 Texla MRI machines.”

People associated with the state health sector said that while private hospitals here may buy the latest MRI machines, government hospitals can upgrade only in the private public partnership model.