Bangalore Bio 2009: Immediate Growth, Governmental Support and Innovative space usage: Need of the Hour

Friday, June 19, 2009: The Day 2 of Bangalore Bio 2009, India's premier Biotechnology event organized by the Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka, Vision Group on Biotechnology and MM Activ Sci-Tech Communications Co saw biotech industry honchos come together to discuss on Medical Devices: New Technologies & Emerging Markets. The Session was chaired by Mr. Dinesh Puri, Chairman & MD - Medived Innovations.

Mr. Puri called for the need of immediate growth in the Indian healthcare industry. "There exists a western MNC domination and 90% of company revenues are derived from US & Western Europe. Four-fifth of the world consumes less than 10% of the medical devices", Puri added.

According to the World Health Organization, by 2011, 100 million Indians will have cardiac heart disorders. Speaking about the challenges faced by medical device growth in India, Puri listed the main reasons as the lack of clean rooms, raw materials and long gestation periods.

Accentuating the importance of external wearable medical devices (WeMed), Dr. Sreekanth Raghavan, HOD & Director, Pediatric & Cardiac Services, Manipal Health Systems said, "WeMed is extremely reliable, cost effective and contributed to higher life expectancy. There has been swift growth in the field of WeMed but, there is a long way to go. He called for the need of 'home life & health statistics' in India."

Echoing the view of the panel, Dr. Bipin Nair, Professor & Dean, Amrita School of Biotechnology spoke about Innovative Biomedical Device Development for Emerging Markets. Classifying medical device markets into Commodity & Innovative Medical products, Nair said, "The immediate necessity is for Governmental and policy support. There are several platforms with high growth potential like Nanotech and MEMS based system. We need to take advantage of these spaces and immediately work on those areas."

Source : Equity Bulls

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