Roadmap 2022

MedTech is recognized as a sunrise sector in India, with a potential to reach USD 50 billion by 2025. India still has a high degree of import dependence wherein 70 percent of the medical devices are imported, and this impinges on our healthcare goals of access and affordability. While the industry remains largely import dependent, initiatives like Make in India, PLI schemes, new medical devices rules, and FDI investments help boost domestic manufacturing. 

The pandemic has inspired promising innovations, particularly in digital healthcare. A strong innovation-driven ecosystem must also support start-ups, with a focus on innovation that meets patient needs and reduces lifetime costs. Indian medical device sector should leapfrog to futuristic technologies. The MedTech industry is multi-disciplinary, and the growth of the medical device sector is dependent on development in all these streams.

There is an urgent need to globally harmonize regulation and quality standards so that the indigenous industry can match up to global standards and make the country a hub for medical device manufacturing. A well-defined National Medical Devices Policy document must be put in place to define short-, medium- and long-term goals for the sector.

Synergy between industry and academia has enhanced after the Covid-19 pandemic in India, and it is now time to embed this interaction by scaling it up for new development and research. 

A trust-based collaboration between the government, MedTech players, and healthcare-delivery partners is necessary to interpret a common set of objectives. A consultative approach should be adopted by the government to solicit views from industry partners on issues like GST rationalization, tax allowances, R&D incentives, and expansion of PLI schemes.

Emerging economies like India, however, need to tackle the challenges of rising costs, inconsistent quality, inaccessibility to timely care, as well as confront the dynamics of globalization, consumerism, changing demographics, and shifting disease patterns with increase in lifestyle and chronic diseases, along with the proliferation of new treatments and technologies.

It is time that we re-engineer the healthcare ecosystem with systemic and structural changes, keeping the ground realities in mind, through innovative and sustainable models of care delivery as well as business processes. This vision can be achieved only with collaborative and outcome-based healthcare delivery, both in public and private healthcare facilities.

There is also a potential for government-Industry collaboration in the area of health technology assessment, which can benefit in improving patient access to care, and outcomes based on cost effectiveness, clinical effectiveness, safety, and certain other aspects. MedTech companies can help in building HTA framework, bring in their clinical expertise, and ensure that these policies ensure innovation and new technology adoption. 

With the government’s commitment to provide Universal Healthcare there is a need for all key stakeholders to develop together a health policy that will bring us a step closer to providing accessible, affordable, and world-class quality healthcare to all.

India has a shortage of healthcare workforce, and the pandemic has forced other countries to increase their focus on the trained manpower from India. This means we need to be present- as well as future-ready. Although the government has taken several steps in recent years, we would need to scale up these measures through appropriate partnerships between public and private sector.

We need to build a healthcare system that is pro-active and non reactive in nature. This is possible through better preventive and primary care infrastructure with equal participation of public and private sector. Technology will play a pivotal role in managing non-communicable and lifestyle diseases in future. We need to work with a vision of leveraging technology to the maximum to keep our population healthy.

The pandemic also paved way for India to demonstrate dynamism and resilience in terms of swift policy making and system-strengthening with unified efforts of all stakeholders. The learnings and response highlighted how these interventions should not be one-time efforts but have the potential to create long lasting impact on the Indian health system.

The road ahead is full of opportunities. It is time for us to collaborate and imbibe new technologies to make India self-reliant in medical devices.