Market & Industry Briefs, November 2012

Article preview from Medtech Insight - December, 2012

Brief summaries of recent medtech market and industry developments. This month we cover China’s switch to a centralized billing system, St. Jude Medical’s RESPECT PFO closure trial, FDA’s approval of HeartWare’s LVAD, and end-of-the-year medtech M&A.

 

 Market & Industry Briefs, November 2012

Article preview from Medtech Insight - December, 2012

China’s determination to use a centralized bidding system to trim public health spending would directly impact purchasing of “high-value” medical devices under recent draft guidelines issued by the country’s Ministry of Health. New pricing pressures on both multinational and domestic device makers are a likely result, industry analysts say.

The Chinese Ministry of Health released a first draft proposal in March 2012 outlining requirements for county-level public hospitals to participate in provincial bidding to purchase medical devices such as stents, pacemakers, dialyzers, and orthopedic products. Currently, tenders for these types of equipment are mostly conducted at the city or county level.

The Ministry issued a second draft September 29 seeking to expand the target list of products to include ophthalmic and dental devices, among others, and provide leeway for provincial authorities to add more categories to the list. “The new policy signals the popularization of provincial tenders for high-value consumables nationwide,” Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific analyst Bin Li said in a March note to investors. “We expect this milestone event to have a profound impact on the device industry.”

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Medtech Insight  newsletter provides insights into the technology and market developments (devices, instrumentation, biomaterials, gene therapy, tissue engineering, etc) impacting a wide range of  surgical and non-surgical clinical practices.