Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region for health care spending, and by 2030 APAC will account for more than 20% of global health care spending, Tom Lawry, managing director of Second Century Tech told the APACMed Forum 2024 conference held in Singapore, Sept 5-6.

Seoul, South Korea-based Neudive Inc. is advancing a game-like digital therapeutic called Buddy-in as a software solution for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to practice and improve social skills.

A decade ago, when Asia Pacific Medical Technology Chairman (APACMed) John Collings was running a medtech business in China, he was flying high with multiple rounds of investment under his belt and preparing to launch two new technologies, but the company hit a regulatory hurdle that delayed the launch and he found himself grappling for answers, he told the APACMed Forum held Sept. 5 in Singapore.

Shares of Chinese and South Korean med-tech companies continued to rise after the World Health Organization declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern Aug. 14 after recent outbreaks.

Quantamatrix Inc. is advancing an Ultra-Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing sepsis diagnostic test, touted as having the world’s fastest all-in-one antimicrobial technology, to reduce sepsis diagnosis time from days to an average of 13 hours.

TGA opened a consultation for regulation of assistive technologies, a key element of which is to make determinations about the regulatory status of some of these products. While the agency makes clear that some items that are currently unregulated may soon be subject to regulation, one of the more innocuous-seeming articles that may fall under regulation is the common and seemingly innocuous wig.

Drug and device sponsors conducting clinical trials in China to support U.S. FDA approval may want to reconsider their choice of trial sites, as trials conducted at hospitals and clinics affiliated with China’s military or in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region could be in for increased scrutiny.

Skin biopsies could be a thing of the past thanks to the development of a new non-invasive microneedle patch to pre-screen for skin cancer. Dermr Health Solutions Pty Ltd. founder and CEO Stefan Mazy told BioWorld that the fledgling genomics startup company is pushing the boundaries of science with its Dermr patch that quickly and painlessly extracts live skin cells in 15 seconds, drastically cutting the time and discomfort associated with traditional biopsy procedures.

China will deepen its health care reforms and will focus on enhancing its public health care capacity at the primary care level and at public hospitals, according to resolutions passed at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July.

Seoul, South Korea-based Adel Inc. raised ₩17 billion (US$12.39 million) in bridge financing to advance its pipeline of Alzheimer’s disease therapies, including its tau antibody-based ADEL-Y01 candidate, currently in a U.S.-based phase I study.