Focus of the two sessions: encourage domestic medical devices and other biological products to replace imports

Medical devices have an important position in the pharmaceutical industry, not only the huge market size, which has exceeded 500 billion yuan in 2018, but also the fast growth rate, and the data of the China Medical Device Industry Development Report shows that the annual increase of the medical device industry has been higher than the average among the eight sub-industries of the pharmaceutical industry counted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology from 2013 to 2016. With the development of medical and health care in China, the medical device industry still has very large room for development.

However, the same as the analysis instrument industry, the medical device industry also faces the problem that although the domestic market size is huge, the high-end market is monopolized by imported products for a long time. In the context of the country's efforts to promote scientific and technological innovation, efforts to solve the risk of key core technology is "stuck", medical devices as the same subject to the industry, also need to actively take measures to develop domestic technology with independent intellectual property rights.

In this year's two sessions, two NPC deputies put forward proposals for the development of medical devices.

Representative Li Yan: Encourage biological product development and production enterprises to carry out domestic substitution

Li Yan is the president of Qilu Pharmaceutical Group. As a leader in the domestic biomedical industry, Li Yan is prepared to submit a motion on insisting on innovation to vigorously promote the development of the biomedical industry at the two sessions this year. She believes that the current constraints on China's biopharmaceuticals to further strengthen the two main factors: original innovation and key equipment.

In order to change the current situation that imported products in the domestic pharmaceutical industry chain dominate the market of high-end instruments, equipment and consumables, Li Yan suggested that the R&D and production enterprises of biological products should be encouraged to carry out domestic substitution, change the bad trend of domestic market that prefers imported products, and be able to give priority to domestic equipment when the quality of domestic products is comparable to that of imported products. At the same time, at the national level through policies and regulations to support the use of imported materials and equipment in the research and market products for the replacement of domestic materials.

Representative Zhou Yunjie: Broaden the application scenario of domestic medical devices

As the president of Haier Group, Zhou Yunjie also has a clear understanding of the weakness of domestic medical devices in the market. He believes that the reason for this problem is that, compared with imported brands with deep technology and experience accumulation and stable product quality, domestic brands have a lower level of product technology, and their products are mainly ordinary and commonly used equipment, and they have long served the market with small medical devices, which do not have enough trust from hospitals and doctors.

Zhou Yunjie also proposed to achieve "domestic substitution" in the field of high-end medical devices. Therefore, this year's proposal for the pharmaceutical industry is "on the proposal to further broaden the application of domestic medical devices scene. In the proposal, Zhou suggested that the state should accelerate the implementation of relevant special plans to expand the application of domestic medical devices; further enhance the awareness and recognition of domestic medical devices, and promote the realization of import substitution of domestic excellent medical devices. At the same time, the state should increase financial investment to further support the research and development and technological upgrading of domestic medical devices.

The medical device industry is a track with great development potential in the pharmaceutical industry, and the overall technical level of medical devices in China still has a small gap compared to foreign countries. In the mid-market domestic enterprises in some technologies already have the ability to compete with imported products, but in the high-end market with high technical barriers, the competitiveness of domestic enterprises is still very weak. Want to achieve the localization of medical equipment replacement, there is still a long way to go, and this requires the state to provide more support.