SHANGHAI – When it went public in April 2007, Simcere Pharmaceutical Group quickly became the largest Chinese pharmaceutical listed in the U.S. Despite a good early performance, the stock never lived up to its promise. The firm’s share price crashed to below $5 after the global financial crisis and has been lingering at below $10 since late 2011.
Plagued by diminishing profits, Siemens is ramping up its medical device business in China and hoping to build on the success it has enjoyed to date in the rapidly growing sector. Siemens (Munich, Germany), a diversified engineering group, has been operating in China in one way or another since 1872. It now has more than 30,000 employees, 17 R&D centers and 41 subsidiaries in the country.
Contradicting a series of reports earlier in the week, authorities in China say they are not currently investigating pricing issues in the medical device industry.
China's huge population of mobile users is awakening to the value and effectiveness of mobile health solutions. Mobile health or mHealth uses mobile devices, often smartphones or tablets, to deliver health-related services. Mobile health solution can both improve health outcomes and lower costs for providers.
When Siemens (Munich, Germany) installed its 1000th ADVIA Centaur CP in a small hospital in Fuzhou, China, it underscored an ongoing push by multinational device makers into the often-underserviced second and third-tier cities and the more rural areas of the country.
China is working towards developing an identification system for medical devices that would make it easier to track individual devices in China and globally.
Shanghai-based MicroPort Scientific issued last week a profit warning for the first half of 2013, unwittingly highlighting the changing dynamics of the market for medical devices in Mainland China.
