According to Steve Cowan, the global marketing manager of the Medical Science and Technology Department of Sandvik Material Technology, from a global perspective, the market for medical devices is facing a challenge of slowdown and extension of new product development cycle, meanwhile, hospitals start to reduce costs, and new high price products must be economically or clinically evaluated before entry.
“Supervision is becoming much stricter and product certifying cycle lengthens. FDA is currently reform on some certifying programs, most of which involves orthopedic implant certifications.” Steve Cowan said.
However, it is not only about challenges. In the next 20 years population over 65 year old in US will grow at the annual rate of 3%, and the global average speed is 2%. At present, the joint reconstruction growth rate in US is greater than 2%. “Market analyzes that the industry will gradually come out of the bottom in cyclical fluctuations and the hospital procurement investigation report in the first quarter this year can confirm this. The hospital procurement Dept. believes that the purchase will have a 1.2% growth next year where the past year only witnessed 0.5% decline.” Steve Cowan said.
he Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and other emerging markets enjoy a great market prospect, which mainly relies on its insurance coverage expansion, middle class growth and increasing disposable income of residents.
According to the introduction from Yao Zhixiu, the current market pattern of orthopedic implant devices and preparations are somewhat similar: the high-end market and primary hospitals are occupied by foreign enterprises, while local companies only focus on secondary class hospitals and low-end market. However, foreign and domestic companies are expanding and competing to second and third line cities. In addition, although the implant device industry in China now has a compound annual growth rate of 20% or more, the market is at a low base. Last year there had 0.2~0.25 million joint replacement operations, but only a relatively low proportion of China’s population. However, China's demands for high quality of medical devices are increasing. In 2010, the market of orthopedics implant in China was over10 billion Yuan.
“In India, implant products mainly fall into three different categories: the first category is the high quality product produced by international enterprises; the second category is India local enterprise focusing on India middle class products; the third kind is local enterprise targeting below-middle class products. It is the second category for the middle class products which has brought changes to India implant device market, pushing the development of the industry.” Manis Singh, the application manager of Sandvik Medical Technology believes, the similar situation will also happen in China and medical device manufacturers can learn experience from India market.