With a view to ensure better deal from the government and give right guidance to the industry towards achieving better growth, as many as 150 companies in the medical devices sector have joined together to float a new forum called Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED).

"The future of Indian industry catering to the approximately USD 3 billion, Indian medical equipments, diagnostics and supplies market is getting darker day by day as the various unfair unfriendly trade practices and anti-industry regulations hitting the industry hard from all sides. To wake up the sleeping government and initiate a movement against these anti-industry regulations and repressive environment, the entire medical devices industry of India has gathered on a single platform to form the association," the organizers said.

Commenting on the need of forming such an association, its coordinator Rajiv Nath said, "Some of the Indian medical devices and equipments are till date controlled by Drugs Act and treated as similar to medicines, although world over it has been recognized as a separate industry. There are hardly any similarity in medicines and devices. So, the medical device industry should be treated as a separate industry from pharmaceutical industry which is regulated by various rules and regulations."

"The industry needed to create a forum to bring in focus the common issues of the stakeholders. So, we all decided to form an umbrella association of Indian Manufacturers Medical Devices covering all types of medical devices whether consumables, disposables, equipments or diagnostics. AIMED will provide the larger and more powerful single platform when needed, said another leader V Agarwal from Surgiwear.

CII and FICCI the two most powerful industry association in India have limited focus in giving a strong representation to this relatively small segment which is currently growing at a pace of 12 per cent per annum and likely to touch USD 5 billion by the end of 2010. Even though much of the demand is met through imports, the domestic industry is at the threshold of a major expansion but is held back due to unfavourable government policies, the leaders pointed out.

Since 2005, after some medical devices have been notified in the Drugs Act, most of the players could not able to sell their products out of India (in the absence of Free Sale License) in developing countries in Africa, Middle East and South America while on the other hand same companies having CE certification could easily sell the products in most of the European countries.

The aim behind forming AIMED is also to allow the government to access a single point of contact and provide various services to the manufacturers like advocacy on policy issues, information services, regulations for medical devices, education and training, services, testing assistance and guidance for quality certification (ISO, CE, GMP), lobbying for funding for R&D from the government, encourage innovations from member units, improve clinician and patient access to the modern, innovative and reliable medical device technologies and to promote global harmonization of Indian device industry.