Six major factors restricting the promotion of medical devices in China

According to the statistics of authoritative departments, the idle rate of equipment in hospitals is as high as more than 20%, and the utilization rate of some medical equipment is too low, resulting in a large number of medical resources being wasted. The reasons come from three aspects, one is the manufacturer of medical equipment, the second is the hospital, the third is the government.

When doing marketing, manufacturers of medical equipment must consider the following six factors that also affect the utilization rate of medical equipment: the first is the patient market, the second is the doctor market, the third is the purchasing market, the fourth is the channel market, the fifth is the policy market, and the sixth is the academic market.

Ⅰ.Patient market

At present, some medical device manufacturers do not pay attention to the patient market, because the purchase right of medical devices is in the hospital, but the end users of medical devices are patients. in the process of treatment, some opinions of patients will affect the doctor’s treatment plan, such as the price: Johnson & Johnson anti-adhesive film is effective in the United States, but the price of an anti-adhesion film is higher than the operation fee of open surgery, resulting in its low utilization rate. Patients can’t afford it.

Such as the expectation that the patient does not want to cut the uterus:  the full cut or half cut of the uterus is used to treat uterine fibroids, resulting in the loss of the patient’s uterus, causing great trauma to the patient both physically and mentally.Recently, the emergence of endoscopy, radiofrequency ablation and other technologies meet the expectations of patients with uterine preservation and minimally invasive treatment of uterine leiomyoma.

The concept of “patient-centered accurate diagnosis and treatment” has become the trend of research and development of medical technology in the future. The medical technology in the future is not simply to improve the performance and high-tech sense of these testing instruments and treatment equipment, but a more humane application for operators and patients. fundamentally, it is a diagnosis and treatment method with higher accuracy, safer, less cost and more comfortable medical experience from the point of view of patients.

Ⅱ.Docto rmarket

A maternal and child health hospital in Jiangsu Province introduced ultrasound focused knife to treat gynecological diseases. Because of its complicated operation, it was not easy to master, and the doctors were not willing to use the equipment, so the equipment was left unused.

There are also some new technologies (new equipment) with less application and low incidence, which is also one of the reasons why the utilization rate of equipment is not high, or even idle.

After purchasing a large equipment in a hospital in Guangdong, because there is no money to set up a matching operating room, the purchased equipment has not been installed for two years. Another reason is that there are no people who can use the machine, so the equipment is idle.

Ⅲ.Purchase Market

The medical equipment entering the hospital has to go through the following steps; the first step: the director of the clinical department demonstrates whether the medical equipment can play a role in the medical, teaching and scientific research work of the hospital, and then makes a report and agrees to introduce the medical equipment. The second step: the equipment section chief examines the price of the equipment, supporting conditions (housing, hydropower, availability of spare parts, consumable sources, whether to meet the requirements), and after-sales service; the third step: the vice president and the dean examine the comprehensive factors such as economic and social benefits brought by this equipment; the fourth step: bidding, bid evaluation and bid winning.At the same time, each province in China has 40 million government procurement funds every year, and the central and western regions also have the support of rural health care reform funds. Every hospital will purchase medical equipment when rating and new buildings are completed, and there will be over quota and over standard allocation of medical equipment to varying degrees.

Ⅳ.Channel Market

Agent system has become the mainstream of China’s medical device market. Only by integrating the resources of agents, manufacturers are responsible for product development, production, market planning and academic promotion, and agents are responsible for public relations, can the effect of “1 + 1” 2 be realized.

However, most medical equipment agents only do public relations, regardless of the actual needs of hospital departments. As a result, after the equipment is introduced, the department director is unwilling to use it, so the equipment is idle.

The purchase of medical equipment in some county and district hospitals is decided by the hospital director alone.

Ⅴ.Policy market

First of all, before a medical device enters the market, it must obtain the product registration certificate, otherwise the product cannot be sold in the market. Secondly, it must apply for the price license, without which the hospital can not charge fees. Finally, it must have the medical insurance reimbursement license, so that doctors are willing to use it frequently.

At present, there are many new equipment produced with new technology. Although they have obtained the product registration certificate for several years, they can only match the charges and medical insurance reimbursement items of relevant products without the charge license of the price bureau and the reimbursement license of medical insurance. Once they are found in the routine inspection of the food and drug administration, they will be fined, and the hospital will not use them any more.

The situation of handling charge license and medical insurance reimbursement license varies from province to province, but it takes at least one year and requires 2-3 top three hospitals in the province to apply. After expert demonstration and charging demonstration, the trial version of charging license is issued. It can only be converted to a formal fee-based license after one year.If a equipment wants to apply for nationwide fee license, it must have been licensed in more than 5 provinces.

Ⅵ.Academic market

The market operation strategy of well-known foreign-funded enterprises represented by GE, Philips, Siemens, Toshiba, Johnson and Medtronic is to first let the national well-known and authoritative experts agree, pull the market through academic activities, invest a lot of money to establish a technical training base, and retrain doctors to master the latest technology, and finally achieve the goal of using brands to drive sales.

However, due to limited funds, Chinese national medical equipment enterprises often take the method of expanding sales and then establishing brand, that is, they sell their equipment to county level hospitals or even private hospitals first, in order to support themselves with money collected first.The new technology (new equipment) mainly used in county and district hospitals is hard to be recognized by the academic community, and once the new technology (new equipment) is labeled as “exclusive for private hospitals” by public hospitals, its market promotion will become difficult, thus the development of enterprises will stop, and the equipment will be left idle because of its inability to provide after-sales service.

How to improve the utilization rate of medical equipment in the hospital is a big problem. First of all, it is necessary for the government to standardize the medical device market, especially to raise the entry threshold for third class of medical devices, and to carry out phase I, phase II, phase III and phase IV clinical trials like drugs, so as to reduce the risk of clinical operation.We should also learn from the automobile industry to implement the recall system for medical equipment with major defects. Secondly, the government needs to guide and support the medical device market, support medical technology with China’s independent intellectual property rights, and give preferential policies, especially fees and medical insurance reimbursement permits. Finally, the government allocates medical equipment to hospitals according to demand, rather than directly allocating government procurement funds to purchase medical equipment.

Hospitals should strengthen pre-inspection, in-process assessment, post-evaluation and on-demand purchase of medical equipment.

Only with the joint efforts of the government, hospitals and manufacturers can we really solve the problem of low utilization rate of medical equipment in hospitals.

Chinese national medical device enterprises will face three obstacles in the process of development, the first is the channel, the second is the brand, and the third is the integration of the product chain.

At present, the market capacity of China’s medical device industry is 200 billion, which is growing at a rate of more than 20% every year. There are 15, 000 manufacturers, of which more than 85% are small and medium-sized enterprises. The main reason for the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises is the small number of dealers. At present, there are 180000 dealers in China, so it is indeed a difficult problem to find excellent dealers of their own from an army of 180000 dealers.

For more information about the medical device registration in China ,contact info@inspirativemed.com