From prosthetics to radiation therapies, the Medtech industry plays a crucial role in the benefit of patients and health care providers. Last year, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that Indian medical devices industry has the potential to grow at 28 per cent each year to reach $50 billion by 2030.
The Medical devices segment constitute a multi-disciplinary sector with the following sub-categories–Electronic equipment, Implants, Consumables and Disposables, Surgical instruments and In-Vitro Diagnostic Reagents. Moreover, the current market size of the medical devices sector in India is estimated to be $11 billion and its share in the global medical device market is estimated to be 1.5 per cent.
In an email interaction with Financial Express.com, Hariharan Subramanian, Managing Director, Siemens Healthcare Private Limited India talked about the vision for driving innovation in the medical device manufacturing industry, current trends, challenges, and opportunities, plans for growth and expansion among others. Excerpts:
What are your upcoming business plans for India?
Under our “New Ambition” phase of Strategy 2025, we are concentrating on five growth vectors globally. In India, our focus is primarily on Access to Care, along with Comprehensive Cancer Care, Cardiovascular and Neurovascular Care, Networked Care, and Digitally enabled Services. We have dedicated strategies in place to contribute to our new ambitions. These strategies complement the growth vectors that we will focus on during our New Ambition phase. India is one of the fastest growing markets in the Asia Pacific region for Siemens Healthineers. Majority of the innovations made at the company have contributions from India, and we in India are completely aligned with our global vision. We believe that further innovations in products, systems, and services are the only way to promote sustainability.
According to you, what is the current status of India’s medical device manufacturing industry? What are some of the key challenges?
As India is well poised to emerge as the global manufacturing hub for medical devices, policies like the Medical Devices Bill are a positive push to the MedTech sector in India. With these developments and the positive push from the government, India is expected to increase its global market share from 1.5% to 10% by growing from the current $11 Bn market to $50 Bn by 2030. While the landscape looks promising, there are a few inherent challenges the MedTech industry has been facing.
The regulatory landscape differs across geographies and due to this, the approval processes become lengthy, and complex affecting time to market and indirectly increasing costs.
Supply chain challenges and material cost escalations that started post-COVID still continue due to geopolitical challenges.
Another challenge that the Med Tech sector is dealing with is the lack of a talent pool that is ready for the market. The cost of trainings is also rising due to a lack of exposure to the industry.
To address this talent gap, structured, long-term collaborative partnerships between industry and academia must significantly expand.
Research and Development needs an higher influx of resources to ensure the development of local technologies to address the challenge of Access to Care.
What is the role of Siemens Healthcare in the country’s medical device manufacturing industry?
We have been manufacturing medical devices in India for over six decades now. Believing in India’s growth story we have been investing in expanding our manufacturing footprint in India. We have always believed in holistic growth and the constant encouragement from the Government of India is consistently fuelling our ambitions. With the expansion of our manufacturing footprint in India, we are thrilled to be able to contribute even more to India’s growth story. We are currently manufacturing Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) devices under the Government of India’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme at our Bengaluru factory. We also manufacture Mobile C-arms. Our Mobile C-Arm, Cios Fit, is conceptualized, designed, and manufactured in India and is exported to over 64 countries across the globe. Our Vadodara factory manufactures products for Lab Diagnostics and Point of Care products catering to the diagnostic industry in India.
Could you share some insights about Siemens Healthcare’s plans for growth and expansion?
We want to create value for our employees, customers, shareholders, and the communities in which we live—through pioneering breakthroughs for the well-being of patients, for everyone, everywhere. We are already in the expansion phase and as a part of that, we are investing ₹ 1,300 crore in an innovation hub in Bengaluru, India. The innovation hub will be housed in a new state-of-the-art campus that combines the existing R&D centre and an ultra-modern medical imaging factory. This will go a long way in advancing the digitalization of healthcare and better serve the needs of emerging markets. Steadily integrating product development and clinical value creation at the new Bengaluru campus will significantly increase our ability to add more value to our customers. Innovative solutions and adoption of digitalization would address current challenges and future needs of the Indian Healthcare industry.
Any plans to diversify into a new services segment? What are some of the upcoming product launches for this financial year?
Customer centricity is at the core of all that we do at Siemens Healthineers. We are constantly evaluating the market needs and working on the products and solutions that will enable healthcare providers in India and globally to improve healthcare delivery.
What is your outlook with respect to innovations? How are you focusing on sustained growth as compared to market competitors?
Innovation to deliver better healthcare and improve the experience of patients and their families has always been our focus. We are a global player built on a history of innovation and a strong engineering heritage. Our legacy of innovation is not only carried forward by our engineers and researchers worldwide, but they are also persistently building upon that. We constantly bring breakthrough innovations to the market – for the benefit of patients, medical professionals, and society, backed by an annual research and development investment of €1.5 billion and about 23,000 technical intellectual property rights, including more than 15,000 granted patents. We are constantly innovating, as we pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere.