Medical instrument sector grows 20% annually

BEIJING - China's medical instrument industry has become a "sunrise industry," with a considerable market size of 400 billion yuan ($63.3 billion), according to a Chinese medical expert.

Moreover, it is expanding by 20 percent year-on-year, Fan Yubo, president of Chinese Society of Biomedical Engineering, said Monday at the 2012 World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering held in Beijing.

However, Fan noted that China still relies heavily on imported high-end sophisticated medical instruments.

"Almost all the artificial knee joints and cardiac pacemakers used in this country are Western imports," Fan said.

Nonetheless, an increasingly number of mid-end ones can be produced domestically and China also exports certain products to other countries, the expert said.

The standard of China's products such as patient monitoring and life support devices, in-vitro diagnostic instruments and medical imaging systems are at an internationally advanced level, Fan said.

China currently has about 15,000 medical instrument manufacturers and more than 300,000 enterprises marketing of such instruments.

The Shenzhen-based Mindray Medical International Limited, a leading medical device company in China, became publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

"At present, the global market size of medical instrument industry is about $400 billion and is expanding rapidly. China still has a long way to go, especially in terms of personnel educating and training," Fan said.

The 2012 World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, themed "promoting health through technology," runs from May 26 to 31.

It is the first time that the conference has been held in China.

"Our time will well be spent getting new knowledge, forming new hypotheses, planning new experiments, developing new health care delivery techniques, forming and renewing friendships," said Herbert Voigt, president of International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.

The congress location reflects the major advances in the recognition and promotion of research in this field in the Asian region, and especially in China, according to Barry J Allen, president of International Union of Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine.