Hyderabad: Call to promote indigenous medical devices

Hyderabad: The Indian medical devices industry wants the government to promote indigenous devices and have closer scrutiny of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the sector. The FDI in the sector stood at $161 million last year. Between 2000 and 2015, the sector received about $800 million in FDI.

Imports constitute 70 per cent of the medical devices sector which include largely imaging equipment, pacemakers, heart implants, robotics, breathing devices and bands for obese patients. 

With patients continuing to pay high prices for medical devices, the industry says there must be a clear definition of what constitutes a medical device, and separate legislation must be enacted to govern the same. 

The confusion over definition, the industry says, has not helped domestic medical device manufacturers. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act that governs both pharmaceutical companies and medical devices manufacturers, does not mandate private and government hospitals to use made-in-India devices.
A senior member of the industry said the government must “support and promote the industry by ensuring that all hospitals use only Indian-made devices. There has to be a strict law.”

Mr Rajiv Nath, member of the Indian Medical Devices, says, “At present, medical devices are being imported and promoted via domestic labelling. This is not going to help as the Indian manufacturer does not stand to gain. Hospitals are still ordering these products as they find the label to be Indian but they know that it is not made here.”

“There is a severe dip in domestic manufacture as they (Indian manufacturers) have not gained anything from the announcement made by the government that medical devices with universal labelling [i.e. non-India-specific labelling] will not be allowed to enter India from September 2014,” said a senior member of IMD on condition of anonymity.

“We see products with new labels in the market but the products are cheap imports from other countries. Many a time, those products are rejected abroad but are used here. But as there is no mechanism in place to check these products, they are freely moving in the market.”

Hospital authorities refute FDI reports
There is no real foreign investment in manufacturing of medical devices in the country, according to hospital authorities. 

A senior official who deals with procurement of medical devices said, “The costs of devices remain the same. Traders have cut profits as they are showing Indian labels. This has no benefit for patients who continue to pay same price.” Experts say many more patients go in for procedures that require implants like stents and knee replacements but the overhead costs of hospitals have increased, which are not always passed on to customers. 

A senior doctor on condition of anonymity said, “There may be a package deal of two days, but some patients have to be kept for a week due to complications. In these cases, it’s not possible to recover costs.”