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GST allows easy access for medical devices, cuts warehouse-transportation costs: Chander Shekhar Sibal
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
May 25 , 2017
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Goods and Services Tax (GST) places medical device companies in a better
position to transport its products to any part of the country. This
would also help reduce warehouse and transportation costs, said Chander
Shekhar Sibal, head, medical division, Fujifilm India.
Other
steps in the right direction by the government are the notified Medical
Devices Rules, 2017 to be enforced from January 1, 2018 to standardise
the imported product manufacture and stop anti dumping. A concept like
the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) at Visakhapatnam is seen to
bolster the Make in India programme, he added.
The government has
also initiated screening programmes and is keen to open cancer centres.
It is here that Fujifilm will scout for collaborations to support the
initiatives like mobile van for screening which would in turn help the
company increase its marketing presence in tier 2 and tier 3 towns for
radiology, Sibal told Pharmabiz.
With an intent to drive
preventive healthcare, the government is looking to equip hospitals with
technology. Digitization has improved workflow quality which increases
efficiency in hospitals and advanced medical technology enables doctors
to treat more patients.
In India, Fujifilm deals with radiology
products which facilitates digitizing of x-rays to store and retrieve
images. Its Image Intelligence ensures consistent high quality output of
x -ray films and dry laser imagers. In addition. the company deals with
endoscopy machines and point of care ultrasound: Sonosite. It is
engaged with few Indian companies to integrate its Fujifilm technology
in x- ray machines and its mobile MicroSkan DR is manufactured by the
Mysuru-based Skanray, he added.
Its India focus is on digital
mammography because of the rising incidence of 1.50 lakh new breast
cancer patients and 50 percent succumbing to it. To spur early detection
of breast cancer, the company has already supplied over 20 FFDM (Full
filled digital mammography) across hospitals, medical colleges and
diagnostic centres including Tata Memorial Hospital, Amulet Innovality
at Batra hospital in Delhi, Tata ATREC, NM Medical in Mumbai, Sri
Ramachandra University, Chennai and Mahajan Imagimg. With over 25,000
installations, Fujifilm caters to almost 50% of the market here.
Specific to digital radiology, it has around 400 systems installed in
India accounting for 40% of market share.
According to Sibal,
imaging technology is critical for India. With an acute shortage of
radiologists to report images of CT scan, MRI, x-rays, there is a huge
need for a tele radiology infrastructure. The present government spend
on imaging technology is a mere 1.5% and needs to raise it to 2.5%.
Electronic medical records and digitization would allow faster storage
and retrieval of scanned images for speedy diagnosis. In tier 2 and tier
3 towns efforts for medical digitization are on. But most of the time,
government projects are delayed, hampering public- private partnership.
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