On January 10, the executive meeting of the State Council decided to "normalize and institutionalize the centralized procurement of drugs and high-value medical consumables to further reduce the medical burden of patients." ”
The medical device industry has achieved vigorous development in the context of the epidemic, and speculation and discussion about medical device collection continue to be enthusiastic. Behind the hilarity, there are both multiple trade-offs on the profit margins of medical device prices and general expectations for "import substitution". A series of medical equipment industry development plans have been introduced, and relevant policies have been providing support for the import substitution of medical devices. How do domestic medical devices shift from "following" to "running together" and then to "leading"? The entry of Internet giants may be able to press the shortcut key for the "import substitution" of medical devices.
The state issued a message: it will gradually expand the coverage of high-value medical consumables collection
The executive meeting of the State Council proposed that the coverage of high-value medical consumables collection will be gradually expanded, and the collection and collection of orthopedic consumables, drug balloons, and implants that are of concern to the masses will be carried out at the national and provincial levels. Xu Xiaoliang, vice president of the Guangdong Medical Device Industry Association and member of the expert group, said in an interview with reporters earlier that due to the relatively large amount of high-value consumables and the high unit price, the collection can reduce the burden on patients to a certain extent. "Dental implant enterprises have higher profits, and their inclusion in the collection is conducive to further compressing the intermediate water and promoting the benign development of the industry." Xu Xiaoliang believes that there are more medical device manufacturers of the same type and the homogenization is obvious, which will also become one of the factors in the scope of shortlisted collection.
In October 2020, the price of coronary stents dropped from 13,000 yuan to 700 yuan in the collection bidding, and the price reduction of more than 90% triggered discussion in the industry, which also launched the "first shot" of vigorous medical device collection.
In September 2021, after the coronary stent, the second high-value medical consumable artificial joint launched the national procurement. According to the results of the collection, the average price of the hip joint selected in the collection was reduced from 35,000 yuan to about 7,000 yuan, and the average price of the knee joint dropped from 32,000 yuan to about 5,000 yuan, with an average price reduction of 82%. Lin Zihong, who once served as an orthopedic surgeon at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and the People's Hospital of Guangdong Province, and is now the founder of the United Doctor Group, believes that the collection can achieve scale through the amount of the belt to a certain extent, and the manufacturer may be able to receive deeper clinical feedback, which can reversely promote the research and development of pharmaceutical devices, drive the development of artificial materials in China, and finally benefit more people.
The decline in the price of medical device products will cause a certain degree of squeeze on the coverage of production costs, advertising costs and marketing expenses. Xu Xiaoliang believes that in addition to making adjustments to marketing strategies, medical device companies should also change the strategic direction of products. "Some companies will still develop new products through continuous innovation, because new products often have the advantage of first-mover dividends, the speed of entering the collection is relatively not too fast, and there is still some price space." For enterprises that enter the collection list, Xu Xiaoliang believes that such enterprises should pay more attention to product production management, raw material management, labor costs, etc., "we must find ways to make their costs more advantageous than competitors." ”
The call for "import substitution" is high: domestic products in some areas have covered more than 70% of the market
Since 2021, the calls for "medical device innovation and research and development, import substitution, and technical research" have become stronger in the national policies and industries.
On February 9, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China drafted the "Medical Equipment Industry Development Plan (2021-2025)" (Draft for Comments), which clarified that major breakthroughs will be made in the field of key components and materials of medical equipment by 2025; on March 6, the Fourth Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference once again emphasized the need to concentrate on key core technology research and accelerate the solution of a number of medical device "card neck" problems.
In terms of local governments, taking Guangdong Province as an example, in the "Announcement on the List of Imported Products of Provincial Health Institutions in 2021" issued by the Guangdong Provincial Health Commission on March 2, 2021, the list of 132 imported medical equipment was reduced to 46 medical devices. On May 10, the Guangdong Provincial Medical Insurance Bureau pointed out that it will establish and improve the coordination mechanism between medical insurance payment standards and centralized procurement of medical consumables, and support the research and development and use of domestic high-quality medical consumables and promote the development of the domestic medical consumables industry by formulating medical insurance payment standards for selected varieties and non-selected varieties of medical consumables.
It can be seen from a series of policy measures that the state is focusing on promoting industrial upgrading and import substitution, and the support will continue to be as rapid as ever.
Until December 28 last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Health Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the State Administration of Market Regulation, the State Medical Insurance Bureau, the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the State Food and Drug Administration jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan" Medical Equipment Industry Development Plan. The content shows that by 2025, the goal is to achieve the advanced foundation of the medical equipment industry and the significant improvement of the modernization level of the industrial chain, etc., and initially form a comprehensive support capacity for public health and medical health needs; by 2035, the research and development, manufacturing and application of medical equipment will be upgraded to the world's advanced level, and China will enter the forefront of medical equipment innovation.
Xu Xiaoliang introduced to Aoyi reporter that China's medical equipment has gone through 40 years of "from agency to original, from low-end to high-end". He pointed out that the development of China's medical device enterprises will go through three stages, the first stage is the agent stage, and then from the agent to self-research; the second stage is domestic substitution, "the products engaged in at this stage of enterprises are mainly high-tech stents, etc., and the main development logic is domestic substitution." "The third stage is local innovation and domestic originality." Xu Xiaoliang analyzed that the current policy support for excellent domestic equipment has increased, and domestic enterprises are gradually improving the core competitiveness of technology. "Some domestic products with relatively low-end technical levels in the medical equipment industry have reached 70%, 80% or even higher in the domestic market import substitution. In some areas with more advanced technology, some domestic enterprises have just made breakthroughs, and their market share is still in the stage of PK with foreign products. ”
According to the statistics of Zhongcheng Digital Medical Equipment, as of the end of June 2021, there were a total of 56 secondary product categories with a localization rate of 0%, a decrease of 6 from the end of 2020; a total of 322 secondary product categories with a localization rate of 0%-70%, and a total of 730 secondary product categories with a localization rate of 70% or more. Compared with the number of 858 secondary product categories with a localization rate greater than 50% at the end of 2020, the number of secondary product categories increased by 53 from January to June 2021, and a total of 911 secondary product categories with a localization rate greater than 50% by the end of June 2021.
Taking cardiovascular stents as an example, before 2004, many multinational giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific occupied the domestic coronary stent market. In 2004 and 2005, Minimally Invasive Medical and Lepu Medical successively listed domestic drugs to elute coronary stents and gradually compete for the market. At present, domestic brands Lepu, Minimally Invasive and Jiwei together occupy more than 70% of the market share of the cardiac stent market, and domestic brands have begun to dominate the cardiac stent market.
Source: Lepu Medical Company official website
Cross-border layout of Internet giants
The epidemic has given the medical device sector explosive growth opportunities, and Internet giants have also heard the wind and rushed into the medical device industry, hoping to get a piece of the pie.
Since the end of October last year, Jiuan Medical has become the largest bull stock in Shanghai and Shenzhen. With the FDA emergency use authorization obtained by the subsidiary Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Antigen Home Self-Test OTC Kit, the company's stock price rose from less than 6 yuan to 59 yuan in just 2 months. The reporter learned that since 2014, Jiuan Medical has cooperated with Xiaomi and become an important partner in the field of xiaomi's medical and health care. In July 2021, Jiuan Medical issued an announcement that it had signed an investment agreement with XiaomiVentures Limited ("Xiaomi Investment"). Jiuan Medical intends to adjust the global business related to iHealth (a US subsidiary) to the structure of the proposed new independent entity (proposed to be named iHealth Inc) through equity structure adjustment and personnel business divestiture. Xiaomi Investment will increase the capital of this entity by $25 million, which will account for 20% after the completion of the capital increase. Jiuan Medical will set up a new wholly-owned subsidiary overseas, and all the existing overseas companies of iHealth will be allocated to the newly established subsidiary, and the relevant personnel, patents, trademark know-how, etc. of iHealth will be assigned to the newly established subsidiary. iHealth will become a partner of Xiaomi in the field of mobile health, and Xiaomi will cooperate with iHealth in user experience, Xiaomi e-commerce and cloud services to jointly build a mobile health cloud platform.
On December 29, 2020, Shanghai Weihe Medical Laboratory Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of 1 million yuan, and its business scope includes inspection and testing services, medical services, medical research and experimental development. Tianyancha's equity penetration shows that Weihe Medical is 100% controlled by Xiaohe Health Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ByteDance.
In addition, Tencent Medical Health's pneumonia CT image assisted triage and evaluation software was approved, marking Tencent's entry into the medical device arena; The industrial and commercial information of Chengdu Quick Purchase Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned holding company of Kuaishou, has changed, and the business scope has added health consulting services, second-class medical device sales, and first-class medical device sales, and the medical device industry has added another member. Under the impact of the general environment, medical device companies should also begin to think about digital opportunities and solutions, and the entry of Internet giants means that the pace of the smart medical era is one step closer.
Aoyi news reporter Lin Shiyan Liu Jie
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