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How Can India Become A Global Medical Device
Manufacturing Hub

The Government of India has recently approved the setting up of 4 Medical Device parks in India including the MedSpark, Trivandrum. This decision fits in well with Porter’s recommendation to have regional clusters. The Government should strengthen the foundations of the medical device industry in India so that it becomes broad based and also deepens its knowledge base. It will be good to identify specific therapeutic areas and technologies where India can specialise and take a leading position globally.

The following is a set of recommendations to help achieve the goal of making India a global medical device manufacturing and research hub:

• Identify potential medical device clusters across India.

• Where some or many of the necessary conditions already exist (such as in the example of Trivandrum given above), these clusters should be prioritised.

• Government must devise attractive incentives for R&D as this is the critical factor for the medical device industry.

• Government must incentivise higher education and skill development in the science subjects to foster a pool of talent locally.

• Government must reach out to large medical device companies across the globe and invite them to participate in India’s plans with specific focus on research and development.

• Medical device parks should offer common facilities to medical device startups and SME’s to bring down the capital cost and encourage more businesses to start and flourish.

• Indian industry needs to invest heavily in research and development. Our record is not good in this aspect and we wili need to change if we aspire to compete in the global market.

• There are a number of research labs in the Government sector with good infrastructure and well trained scientific talent which are currently under utilised. We must find a way to increase the interaction between industry and research labs.

• A major factor which drives the success of the industry and is also its biggest constraint is the regulatory system. We need strong regulations to protect the health of patients but we also need simple and clear regulations which will allow companies to bring innovations in medical care quicker to patients. There is a definite need to invest in the training and skill development of the regulatory agencies to achieve these twin goals.

• The current covid pandemic has forced businesses to rethink their supply chains and review their business strategies. It appears that we may have to live with the virus for quite a while and this will have an impact on our supply chains making them shorter and bringing suppliers closer to manufacturing plants. The cluster concept fits well in this scenario.

• India must embrace a Quality First mission for medical devices. The single most important factor driving performance in medical devices is quality products to assure patient safety. Currently Indian products do not enjoy a high reputation in the global market with honorable exceptions. There can be no compromise on quality.

In conclusion, I believe we have many of the necessary conditions to succeed as a global medical device manufacturing and research hub, but they are not sufficient. If we can fill the gaps and implement the recommendations above, I see a very bright future for our country in this field.

Reference:  The Minnesota Medical Devices Cluster Microeconomics of Competitiveness Professor Michael E. Porter Project Adviser: Professor Jorge Ramirez-Vallejo Harvard Business School May 6, 2011 Ankur Puri Ipek Demirsoy Lucinda Woods Mi Zhou Thongchai Rattanaruengyot..