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7th edition of India Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Conference 2022

The 7th edition of the India Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Conference 2022 was held in New Delhi on April 25, 2022. The theme of the three-day conference is – Vision 2047: Transformative roadmap for the future. The conference aims at bringing together the pharma industry and medical device manufacturing players, stakeholders, and academia to deliberate upon the future roadmap of the industry in the next 25 years.  Four sessions were conducted on different themes – Transforming Healthcare through Innovation and Integrated Services, Establishing Patient-centered Outcomes of Care for Promoting Value-based Procurement, Manufacturing, Demand & Global Supply Chain of Medical Devices, and Research and Development and Innovation in MedTech.

Bhagwanth Khuba, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers said that under the visionary leadership of the Hon’ble Prime Minister we are progressing in every sector and are committed to provide speedy development to all. The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices sector is a key sector of the global as well as Indian economy. We will become a 5 trillion-dollar economy as envisioned by the Hon’ble Prime Minister if we all work together, he added.

The Union Minister of State said that the Indian pharma and medical device sector has huge growth potential. We can not only cater to the needs of the domestic market but also manufacture for the world. “India has the capability of producing at low cost. We currently produce only 20 percent of these equipment in India and are import dependent. The government is committed to extend all support to the industry to ensure that the country becomes AtmaNirbhar in the sector. In the last eight years, the government has taken various initiatives to propel growth in the sector. India can achieve self-reliance in pharmaceuticals and medical devices only by strengthening its Research and Development infrastructure, which would drive expansion of access to life-saving medicines and position India as a global pharmaceuticals and medical devices export hub.

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog said that the Indian healthcare industry has been growing at a fast pace since 2016 and it is expected to reach close to $380 billion this year.  Inviting foreign investors to produce medical devices in India, Shri. Amitabh Kant stated, “If you develop and manufacture medical devices here, you are not producing only for India but for the world and the market is huge in size and scale. Healthcare along with the pharma and medical sector are India’s biggest job creators. India’s relative cost competitiveness and availability of skilled labour will make it a favoured destination also for the medical value tourism in the years to come”.

S Aparna, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals, Govt of India highlighted that India has the triple advantage of cost, quality and scale in the pharma sector and this needs to be ramped up. She further added that India has built up reputation for being able to deliver good quality generic medicine, at high production scale and at affordable prices.

“It is a matter of pride that we are able to fulfil 50 per cent of the demand in many of the low-income economy as well as in advance market by supplying on a regular basis good quality generic medicines. This triple advantage in quality, cost, and scale needs now to be ramped up to the next level. It would be important to put our heads together and try to look at world as it will be 25 years hence.”

Aparna further stated that the pace of change is growing very fast in the health sector hence the skills that are required will be agility, ability to overcome redundancy and creativity at every level. “There are three strands which we should focus on regulatory framework, research framework along with the resources including fiscal and talent,” she added.

She also stated that in order to achieve the desired goals we need to work on collaboration. “Collaboration between large companies and start-ups, industry and academia collaboration by making public research more accessible and collaboration across sectors including the drug, devices sector along with the digital sector,” said Aparna.

Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt of India said, “The paradigm of health has shifted from health to wellness and to well-being. Health is not limited to what happens in a hospital or between a patient & pharmacy; health is much more than that.”

Highlighting the merits of the Ayushman Bharat program, Bhushan said that under this, the government is planning to operationalize around 1.5 lakh health and wellness centers in the country by 2022. He further stated that the government is planning to spend Rs 65,000 crores in the next 5 years till 2025-26 to create health infrastructure at district levels.

Bhushan also added that during the pandemic, the government worked on the mission mode to repurpose the existing hospital, doctors, beds, at district level. “I urge the industry to collaborate with the government to identify the existing skills set which can be repurposed to suit the emerging needs,” he added.

Anurag Jain, Secretary, DPIIT, Govt of India said that apart from the Make in India, we should also focus on discover in India, innovate in India and then Make in India and this is important especially for the pharma sector. The Budget also focused on the pharma sector as the sun rise industry along with the supportive policy and encouraging R&D by the government. “The most important role for policymakers is to assure collaborative network between the government, industry and academia. We saw this approach during the management of Covid & India has successfully ward off the pandemic,” he added.

Jain also highlighted the importance of IPR in the sector and stated that this is the first time that the number of patents filed by Indians exceeded the number of patents filed by non-Indians in India.

Vishwaprasad Alva, FICCI Medical Device Committee Chair, said there is a need for transparent government tendering, procurement and payment systems among other measures, to help scale up the domestic medical technology sector which has export potential of USD 100 billion by 2047. He also demanded a white paper to find what happened to USD 1 billion allocations every year on the rural healthcare programmes in the country over the last ten years.

”Just attracting MNCs and Indian companies in MedTech would not happen unless there is demand and demand is through Ayushman Bharat and rural healthcare programmes. I think there is a need to publish white paper every year to find what happened to one billion dollar allocations every year that we made on the rural healthcare programmes in the last ten years. The deployment has been quite different from what has been allocated. The second important thing for the MedTech sector is the transparent government tendering, procurement and payment systems. It is not the right forum but there are various states which have not paid to the MedTech sector in the last four years. The sector which is already in quite bad shape is on the verge of collapsing,” Alva said.

He also pointed towards long periods taken to resolve industrial disputes in the country.

A lot of investors are asking us to have a corporate office in Singapore, the UK, the Netherlands because it takes endless time to get justice for industrial disputes in the country. For vision 2030 and 2047 we request the minister for a three day intensive workshop where we have MEA, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Meity and Ministry of Women and Child Development to evolve an action plan to bring all the departments together. One thing common in the current situation is the communication between different ministries when it comes to the MedTech sector,” Alva added.

He noted that the USD 100 billion target was achievable if measures were undertaken in a swift manner.

Domestically and internationally there are about 7-8 countries in the world that are supplying products to the rest of the countries and India being very strong in high complexity low volume products has an opportunity to go from fraction of billion dollars to USD 30 billion by 2030 and USD 100 billion dollars by 2047,” he stated.

While terming medical technology as a critical sector, Alva noted that there is a need to create a strong domestic demand to fuel future growth. India has USD 30 billion export potential by 2030 in the MedTech sector and USD 100 billion by 2047 if we act now and act fast. It is also important to incentivise domestic R&D, component manufacturing base and not just last minute assembly.

Pankaj Patel, Past President, FICCI and Chairman, Zydus Cadila Healthcare said that our goal is to achieve $130 billion by 2030 and in order to achieve that we need 12-13 per cent growth rate. Industries today are not growing at that rate; a significant jump in growth rate would be required and the only way is to move from volume to value game, which means we need to innovate, he added.

Sanjay Murdeshwar, MD, Novartis India said that the vision for 2047 in pharmaceutical sector is based on fundamental belief that when India innovates, the world can certainly benefit. That is the core of what we need to really focus on, he added.

Gagandeep Singh, Country President & MD, AstraZeneca, said that if we have to really look at the Vision 2047, we have to look at the capabilities of the country we have. We stand at the cusp of being leaders in IT, Chemicals and now, a rapidly developing biological powerhouse.

Siddharth Mittal, CEO, Biocon said that India has over 100 biosimilars approved which is the highest of any country in the world. This shows the level of commitment from CDSCO and the Government, he noted.

Dr Viranchi Shah, President, IDMA said that it is imperative for the industry to focus on cost, compliance and adopt innovative process. He also highlighted 5 areas which needs special focus including the supply chain, talent pool, automation, research and technology.

This year, the Department of Pharmaceuticals has announced six main categories of the India Pharma and India Medical Devices Awards in: -Leaders Category, Company of the Year, MSME of the Year, Start-ups of the Year, Innovation Category, CSR Category.

Following are the winners of India Pharma & India Medical Device 2022 Awards:

India Pharma & India Medical Device 2022 Awards
Sl. No. Category Award Awardee Rank
1 Leaders Category Awards India Pharma Leader of The Year Cipla Limited Winner
India Medical Devices Leader of the Year Poly Medicure Limited Winner
Healthium Medtech Limited Runner-up
Transasia Bio-Medicals Limited 2nd Runner-up
2 Company of the Year  Award India Pharma (Formulation)

Company of the Year

Micro Labs Limited Winner
India Medical Devices

Company of the Year

Trivitron Healthcare Winner
Nice Neotech Medical Systems Private Limited Runner-up
Kanam Latex Industries Privet Limited 2nd Runner-up
3 MSME Category Awards India Medical Device

MSME of the Year

Nice Neotech Medical Systems Private Limited Winner
Premium Healthcare Disposables Privet Limited Runner-up
AVI Healthcare Private Limited 2nd Runner-up
4 Start-Up

Category

India Medical Device

Start-Up of the Year

Vanguard Diagnostics (P) Limited Winner
5 Innovation Category India Pharma Innovation

of the Year

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited Winner
India Medical Device

Innovative of the Year

Meril Life Sciences Private Limited Winner
6 CSR Category India Pharma CSR Company of the Year Zydus Lifesciences Limited Winner
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited Runner-up
Lupin Limited 2nd Runner-up

Senior officials from the Ministry of chemicals and Fertilizers, FICCI, Invest India, and CEOs of various Pharma and medical devices companies were also present at the conference.
MB Bureau

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