The central government will soon come up with a slew of policy decisions to give critical push to the medical technology sector as a part of the 'Make in India' programme. The measures will include evolving a regulatory mechanism for the sector through a separate legislation, overhauling tax structure to make the domestic production of medical equipment more competitive through introducing purchase preference for boosting local manufacture and stress on research & development, said Dr VK Subburaj, secretary, department of pharmaceuticals (DoP).

He said this at a medical conference hosted by CII in New Delhi on theme 'Achieving $50 billion turnover by 2025'.

He said that a separate regulatory system for the medical equipment domain could unleash the potential. For this, he stressed that the sector should have a critical mass and a solid growth trend. “The healthcare sector in India would be growing 4 to 5 times from the present level necessitating a separate body to regulate the industry,” he stated.
 
Dr Subburaj further that Prime Minister’s Office is taking keen interest in pushing several schemes for boosting the medical equipment production in the country. The progress is being monitored regularly and the DoP has been empowered to implement the schemes without any loss of time.

Referring to the anomalies in the tax structure that act against local manufacturing of medical equipment, the pharma secretary said, “This is being examined at the highest level taking inputs from PM’s office, Finance, DIPP and the DoP. We hope to correct these anomalies well in time to create an eco-system for local manufacturing.”

The industry has been taking up with the government the inverted tax structure wherein the import of raw materials is taxed higher than that of finished and semi-finished goods.

Another area which is catching the attention of the government, Dr Subburaj said, was purchase preference for the equipment manufactured by Indian companies. More than two-third of the medical equipment are imported. At the same time, some of the locally manufactured equipment are competitive both in quality and price. There are 800 units in India across large, medium and small sectors manufacturing medical equipment in the country. With the higher turnover of the healthcare sector, the number of these units would go up in the near future. “We are looking at the tender documents to enable sourcing of equipment locally to give a big boost to medical equipment sector in the country,” he added.

On R&D, Dr Subburaj said industry should engage active attention of all stakeholders including the government to boost the medical equipment production in the country. Presently, there are various departments in the government such as science and technology, biotechnology, and other specialised institutions, which are involved in R&D and in evolving incentives for innovation and discovery.

He said, “We are devising measures for better coordination among these bodies not only for facilitating discoveries and innovations but also for marketing them,” adding that these activities would be coordinated by DoP. Also, a separate website would be launched so also a yearbook listing out innovations, expertise, discoveries etc. to create an eco-system for boosting R&D in the segment.

Dr Subburaj underscored that the basic objective of healthcare system was to make treatment affordable and accessible by the people. Presently, the total number of surgeries done in India are between 1.5 to 2 lakhs, whereas the demand was for performing 25 lakh surgeries. The reason for not doing the surgeries were either due to lack of facilities for diagnosis or non-affordability of the patients for undergoing the costly surgeries. By making medical system cost effective, there is tremendous scope for expanding the healthcare system, particularly the medical equipment domain.