In order to tap the potentials of the Rs 1.5 billion dollar medical electronics industry and to create awareness about the opportunities in this growth area, FICCI has launched the FICCI-MEF (FICCI Medical Electronics Forum).

The FICCI-MEF, chaired by Anjan Bose, senior director, Indian Sub-Continent, Philips Electronics India Ltd will focus on quality, safety and regulatory issues through harmonization of standards, testing and calibration. It will apprise the government about various concerns and suggest mechanisms to spur the growth of the sector; besides generating awareness about the available advances and benefits in medicare and medical electronics technology among healthcare stakeholders.

The Forum will also focus on skill development and knowledge up gradation through appropriate industry-academia-research body cooperation; promote medical electronics technology for affordable and quality healthcare; and facilitate a favourable policy environment for large-scale investments in R&D and manufacturing of medical electronics technology.

The FICC-MEF core group members are India Medtronic, Philips, Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, GE, BPL, Wipro, HD Medical and Abbott Vascular.

The Forum is classified in three sub-groups, Regulatory Affairs, Manufacturing and R&D. India Medtronic managing director Milind Shah, who is also co-chairman, FICCI-MEF, leads the technical sub-group on regulatory affairs. The sub-group on manufacturing is led by GE Medical Systems vice-president A K Kakkar Shyam Banerji leads the sub-group on R&D.