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COVID-19 pushes MedTech & IVD toward assured growth

As the world continues to reel from COVID-19, which has demonstratively changed the way we look at every aspect of our lives, healthcare is most likely one area that has witnessed the maximum change, besides information technology and IT-enabled services.

A sector heavily dependent on technology, modern medicine and healthcare has undergone immense changes and taken gigantic steps in the last two decades, aided by proliferation of technological innovations. From advanced treatment platforms to newer protocols, technology has made lives of physicians, patients, and healthcare service providers much easier.

Technology has not only helped in making treatments more precise, it has also added to quality of life for people. The potential of healthcare and allied industries in India as a larger industrial platform has drawn the attention of investors, as growing impact of medical technologies is helping to ensure that quality healthcare is more accessible and affordable than it was even a decade ago.

As a testimony to this growth story, a recent report by the Ministry of Science & Technology finds that India’s MedTech sector has a potential to reach USD 50 billion by 2025.

While the report finds that there still remains a significant gap in penetration of medical devices, the sector has undeniable growth opportunities, which need to be addressed by not just tech giants, but also by large hospitals, and even insurance providers.

The report points out that if India has the technology and expertise, it also has the knowledge and human resource potential for indigenous development to address the nation’s goals of becoming self-reliant, without having to depend on ideas or hardware from overseas.

We have always known is that India has some of the best possible manpower and facilities for medical management in hundreds of centers across the country, many of which are easily comparable to top-notch facilities in the West. What will help in paving the path to self-reliance is a move to pool resources nationally, taking into account quality manpower and talent available in both public and private sectors, as also in start-ups.

Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister for Science & Technology, informed in his keynote address at CII’s 13th Global MedTech Summit in September that the Commerce Ministry has set a target of taking merchandise exports to USD 400 billion by the end of FY 2021-22, scaling it up to USD 1 trillion by 2028, much of which will be medical devices and reagents, giving a major boost to the indigenous MedTech and in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) sectors.

As this target gains a more solid shape, it will be up to the Indian healthcare sector to adapt and adopt newer technologies, putting particular focus on areas like telemedicine, digital medicine, and personalized devices, many of which have already found widespread users among the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020.

We must simultaneously also look at being in sync with international benchmarks for treatment protocols, regulations, and quality standards so that performance value of Indian MedTech and IVD can match up to global standards.

The ultimate goal should be to make India a hub for medical devices manufacturers, supporting not just internal consumption, but also exports. Here, the immediate need is to update the existing policy document for devices and diagnostics, laying down a well-defined roadmap, with staggered goals.

As we have all noted, since last year, while the pandemic has changed even the basic workings of healthcare, COVID-19 has had particular impact on IVD, with a growing demand for testing methods that are not only fast and precise, but are also able to handle large volumes.

We have seen how RT-PCR came to be regarded as almost the gold standard for confirmatory tests, helping to define the prevalence, rate, and cyclic measure of the viral load.

While demand for diagnostic tests has seen a sharp rise between March and October 2020, it is expected to grow higher, taking into consideration factors like increase in both lifestyle diseases and awareness about these, along with a change in attitude toward preventive healthcare, will continue to drive the sector.

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