Kugako Sugimoto, NOST Tokyo
Origineel gepubliceerd op de site van Agentschap NL.
Een belangrijk onderdeel van de Japanse economische groei strategie is meer steun voor de export van medische apparatuur. Door medische apparatuur aan te bieden als integraal onderdeel van totale medische zorgconcepten, medische dienstverlening of complete ziekenhuizen hoopt de Japanse overheid meer belangstelling voor de Japanse kennis en kunnen op dit gebied in het buitenland te wekken.
Strengthening of the Japanese Medical Equipment Industry by exporting complete medical care systems
Summary
A METI* seminar in March on the strengthening of the Japanese healthcare industry highlighted new export strategies. One of strategies to boost the industry of medical equipment is exporting medical equipment together with the medical facilities, services, and people. Some of the international projects of exporting medical services have already started and new projects are coming up.
Details
During a seminar on the strengthening of the Japanese healthcare industry on March 26, 2013 in Tokyo. Healthcare Industries Division of METI’s Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, explained its policy to promote Japanese healthcare industries, especially focusing on the exports of medical equipment from Japan. Healthcare Industries Division required the budget for the fiscal year 2013 of fifteen millions euro for this strategy.
Right now Japan mostly imports medical equipment and lags behind in overseas and domestic sales of medical equipment. In 2011, the annual trade deficit of medical equipment was 4.6 billion euro. Though high technologies and quality control systems used for the automobile and electronics industries seem applicable to the medical equipment industry, such systems currently do not create profit effectively. To solve the trade deficit and to create a strong medical industry, support systems to export the Japanese medical system as a integrated package will be launched. The package includes hospitals, medical practitioners, and medical equipment.
The package sale aims to increase the attractiveness of medical equipment by linking them with excellent medical services and skills. Empirically, medical practitioners have a tendency to continue using the same brand of the equipment they used during their on-the-job training. Providing training by using Japanese medical equipment will hopefully increase the number of medical practitioners who prefer to use the Japanese products in the targeted countries.
METI is conducting projects to export hospital services overseas. One example is a medical examination car in Beijing. Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation participates in this project. It manufactures chest and stomach x-ray systems with a treatment table, especially suitable for loading on an examination car. Systems are compact and operate durably under unstable condition. Hamamatsu Photonics participates in another project to build centers for pathological and image diagnosis of radiology in China and Vietnam. The company digitalizes the information from specimen by using technology such as time delay integration (TDI), capturing images by integrating the charges from a moving object. Hamamatsu Photonics offers service to maximize the performance of TDI by lighting, optical systems, and motion control. Terumo is in the diabetes treatment project including instruction of dietary cure and therapeutic exercise in China. Termumo is one of leading companies in manufacturing of cardiac, vascular, and blood management related equipment. The company manufactures blood collection system, blood component processing, cell expansion system, etc. Blood glucose monitors usable at home and hospitals will be introduced in this project.
MEJ was assigned by METI as an overseas export promoter of Japanese medical systems. It will collect information on medical needs, license system of medical practitioners, pharmaceutical approval application as well as building networks in the targeted countries. MEJ, currently, organizes the services associated with medical tourism from overseas and does not have members to support the organization. Financially it depends mostly on METI. To function as an mediator of medical services more actively, MEJ aims to operate the organization by member fees of medical equipment industries in the near future.
METI will encourage pharmaceutical companies to join MEJ and further aims to include drugs as a package exports of medical system from Japan.
*METI = Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
MEJ = Medical Excellence Japan
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