A Report on the Indian Medical Equipment Industry
A report on the Indian Medical Equipment Industry
The scenario
The one cardinal necessity of every individual these days is healthcare. There are thousands of deaths unreported each day, which occur due to medical neglect, the cause of most of which is the exorbitant fees one has to pay in order to avail proper treatment.
Part of the cost is that of the doctor, while another part is for the technology or equipment used. In order to diagnose a disease, we need specific diagnostic devices/ equipment. These equipment are purchased by the hospital, at enormous prices, which are attempted to be recovered by charging the diagnostic tests a proportional amount.
Even these proportional amounts are huge to the extent that only a few can afford it. As a result, most people are not able to identify what they are suffering from, and end up losing their lives even due to the most easily curable diseases.
If it is a disease like cancer, which is now prevalent throughout a majority of the Indian population at an alarming rate, even if the disease is diagnosed, there is much to worry about other than the disease itself.
The cost of nuclear medical imaging and therapeutic equipment in our country runs up to multi crores. Add to this the installation charges. These facilities are hardly available in government run hospitals. The private hospitals, which have invested in the equipment, milk the patients dry in the name of the tests.
Basically, there is a dearth of medical equipment manufacturers in the country. Though there are small companies which manufacture equipment of the scale of a stethoscope, forceps and the like, there are hardly any companies in the fore that can compete with the multinational companies of the likes of Siemens, GE and Phillips.
There are a few companies that play middlemen to these manufacturers and the hospitals, and grab their share in the whole money making scheme. They sell the manufactured products, and supervise installation in the
The scenario
The one cardinal necessity of every individual these days is healthcare. There are thousands of deaths unreported each day, which occur due to medical neglect, the cause of most of which is the exorbitant fees one has to pay in order to avail proper treatment.
Part of the cost is that of the doctor, while another part is for the technology or equipment used. In order to diagnose a disease, we need specific diagnostic devices/ equipment. These equipment are purchased by the hospital, at enormous prices, which are attempted to be recovered by charging the diagnostic tests a proportional amount.
Even these proportional amounts are huge to the extent that only a few can afford it. As a result, most people are not able to identify what they are suffering from, and end up losing their lives even due to the most easily curable diseases.
If it is a disease like cancer, which is now prevalent throughout a majority of the Indian population at an alarming rate, even if the disease is diagnosed, there is much to worry about other than the disease itself.
The cost of nuclear medical imaging and therapeutic equipment in our country runs up to multi crores. Add to this the installation charges. These facilities are hardly available in government run hospitals. The private hospitals, which have invested in the equipment, milk the patients dry in the name of the tests.
Basically, there is a dearth of medical equipment manufacturers in the country. Though there are small companies which manufacture equipment of the scale of a stethoscope, forceps and the like, there are hardly any companies in the fore that can compete with the multinational companies of the likes of Siemens, GE and Phillips.
There are a few companies that play middlemen to these manufacturers and the hospitals, and grab their share in the whole money making scheme. They sell the manufactured products, and supervise installation in the