India's healthcare sector expects to reach $50 billion by 2025: Union Minister Dr Jitendra

New Delhi: India's Healthcare sector is expected to grow to reach a size of $50 billion by 2025, said Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh.

Addressing the 14th CII Global MedTech Summit titled "Seizing the Global Opportunity", Dr. Jitendra Singh said, under Prime Minister Modi, healthcare has become more focused on innovation and technology over the past two years and 80% of healthcare systems are aiming to increase their investment in digital healthcare tools in coming five years. 

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Telemedicine is also expected to reach $5.5 billion by 2025. eSanjeevani, a Ministry of Health & Family Welfare conceived technical intervention, has enabled virtual doctor consultations and connected thousands of people living in remote parts of the country with doctors in major cities while sitting in the comfort of their own homes, the Minister added.

Dr. Jitendra Singh said the prime objective of the government is to reduce import dependence from 80% to below 30% in the next 10 years and ensure a self-reliance quotient of 80% in Med-Tech through Make in India with SMART milestones. He said, towards this, the Indian Government has undertaken structural and sustained reforms to strengthen the healthcare sector and has also announced conducive policies for encouraging FDI.

This has led to a change in trend, with the country becoming a hotbed of MedTech innovation and instead of adopting western products, Indian innovators are developing path-breaking MedTech products and solutions. India has reached an inflection point, which is leading to the rapid expansion of the HealthTech/ MedTech ecosystem.

India has all the essential ingredients for exponential growth in this sector, including a large population, a robust pharma, and medical supply chain, 750 million plus smartphone users, 3rd the largest start-up pool globally with easy access to VC funding, and innovative tech entrepreneurs looking to solve global healthcare problems. The Minister also noted that the pandemic has provided an additional impetus by changing the scenario of doing business in this sector. He said it has opened massive opportunities for the healthcare sector, especially in niche areas like tele- consultation, AI-based diagnostics, and remote healthcare management.

Dwelling on the Vision @ 2047, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, it is expected that India becomes one of the top markets in medical devices upwards of 14% - 15%. He said this global position is attainable by achieving the targets set in the National Infrastructure Pipeline 2020, to build 73 new medical colleges to increase domestic consumption and improve healthcare infrastructure.

The Minister added that India aims to achieve 10-12% of the global market share of the medical devices sector to arrive at a $100-300 billion industry, the government's draft policy pegs, adding that the country will have about 50 clusters for faster clinical testing of medical devices to boost product development and innovation. He further added that what is going to drive this sector forward is life expectancy, a shift in disease burden, changes in preferences, a growing middle class, an increase in health insurance, medical support, infrastructure development, and policy support and incentives.

Dr. Jitendra Singh underlined that it is indeed time to work towards establishing a global footprint by becoming the manufacturing hub and key exporter of medical devices worldwide, as this is an important objective of the Make in India Campaign, in which Indian medical devices sector has been identified as a sunrise segment. He said this recognition has given the industry the much-needed impetus to deepen its prowess in the value chain across device segments ranging from low-tech segments to more sophisticated categories of devices.

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