The notice of the National Health Commission calls for accelerating the development of rehabilitation equipment industry

2021-06-18

On June 16, 2021, the National Health Commission issued the Notice on Printing and Distributing Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Rehabilitation Medical Work (hereinafter referred to as the “notice”).

The highlights of the “notice”include：

In principle, each provincial capital city and prefecture level city with more than 3 million permanent residents should set up at least one rehabilitation hospital at the second level or above; At least one county-level public hospital in a county with a permanent population of more than 300000 has a rehabilitation department; At least one county-level public hospital in a county with a permanent population of less than 300000 has a rehabilitation clinic.
The”notice”encourage qualified medical institutions to carry out a close cooperation between rehabilitation medicine and clinical related disciplines such as surgery, neurology, orthopedics, cardiovascular, respiratory, critical care and traditional Chinese medicine, strengthen early rehabilitation intervention, and integrate rehabilitation into the whole process of disease diagnosis and treatment.
The notice encourages the qualified medical institutions to extend rehabilitation services to community and home through Internet plus, family beds and door-to-door visits, giving priority to providing home rehabilitation, day rehabilitation training, rehabilitation guidance and other services for disabled or elderly people, chronic patients and severely disabled.

Aging population promotes the development of 49.1 billion domestic rehabilitation equipment industry

Rehabilitation medicine is an important measure of the national strategy to deal with the aging population.According to the results of the seventh census, the population aged 60 and above in China is 26.402 million, accounting for 18.70%; Among them, there are 190.64 million people aged 65 and above, accounting for 13.50%.Compared with 2010, the proportion of people aged 60 and above increased by 5.44 percentage points.

Driven by the aging population, China’s rehabilitation medical devices, as the fastest growing part of the rehabilitation medical industry in recent years, are ushering in explosive growth.According to the data, the market scale of China’s rehabilitation medical devices will increase from 18.1 billion yuan in 2016 to 41.3 billion yuan in 2020, and it is estimated that the market scale of China’s rehabilitation medical devices will reach 49.1 billion yuan in 2021.

It is worth noting that this notice clearly pointed out the need to promote the development of rehabilitation assistive devices.The cross of rehabilitation aids and medical devices mainly focused on orthosis and some personal medical aids.According to the data, the market scale of electric wheelchair, hearing aid and prosthesis will reach 14 billion yuan, 5 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan in 2020, with a total of 23 billion yuan.Among them, the market growth rate of wheelchairs and hearing aids has remained above 15%, and the future will remain the focus of the development of rehabilitation medical aids in China.