Hyderabad: City startups elated over new medical devices policy

Hyderabad: Hyderabad-based medical devices startups are jubilant with the announcement of the National Medical Devices Policy 2023 on Wednesday by the Centre which is an essential and integral constituent of the Indian healthcare sector. The medical devices sector in India is a sunrise sector which is growing at a fast pace. The market size of the medical devices sector is estimated to be $11 billion (approximately Rs 90,000 crore) in 2020 and its share in the global medical device market is estimated to be 1.5 percent.

The National Medical Devices Policy, 2023 is expected to facilitate an orderly growth of the medical device sector to meet the public health objectives of access, affordability, quality and innovation. With this policy, most of the startups feel that issues such as manufacturing, assembling, and marketing of the devices can be addressed.

"With the announcement of this policy, it eases regulatory hurdles with the single window clearance system," said Habib Ali, founder of startup BeAble. "The policy allows for more R&D and innovation abilities. We hope to see more investments and funds flowing from now onwards. If the policy is implemented effectively, we aim to deal with better and skilled human resources for manufacturing," he said.

Aparna Bhogu, Co-founder of startup Monitra Healthcare, which offers band-aid-like patches for a non-invasive way to ensure preemptive treatment of heart conditions says that this policy aims to cover six broad areas of policy intervention such as facilitating R&D and Innovation, human resources development and regulatory streamlining.

"An important dimension of this policy is establishing Centres of Excellence (CoE) in academic and research institutions. This is a significant move because it can lead to collaboration with medical devices startups in coming days," she said. Most importantly, the policy addresses the constraining factors for medical devices startups such as manufacturing, hardware design, assembling, marketing awareness, expanding our distribution chain across various cities in India and others.

Suresh Susurla, founder of Startoon Labs Private Limited and leading physiotherapy device maker Phezee which is suitable for patients with neurological disorders says with policy focusing on indigenous R&D and manufacturing, it gives confidence to the founders of medtech startups. The regulatory mechanism can be accelerated and helps startups to market their products very swiftly.

He further pointed out that Hyderabad has a rich and growing ecosystem of medtech and healthtech startups. This industry is bound to grow in the city if subsidies are provided on lands for setting up manufacturing plants which can be a great boon for emerging startups.

 TO IGNITE INNOVATIVE IDEAS…

The medical devices sector in India is a sunrise sector which is growing at a fast pace

The market size of the medical devices sector is estimated to be $11 billion (approx Rs 90,000 crore) in 2020 and its share in the global medical device market is estimated to be 1.5%