The National Center for Innovation in High-Performance Medical Devices has been established in Shenzhen.

2020-05-08

　　On May 8, Liu Fang, a reporter for Shenzhen News (a publication of China Youth Daily and China Youth Net), reported that, according to information obtained by the reporter from the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has approved the upgrade of the Guangdong Province High-Performance Medical Device Innovation Center to the National High-Performance Medical Device Innovation Center. The National High-Performance Medical Device Research Institute in Shenzhen will serve as the supporting institution to carry out the establishment work. This is the only national manufacturing innovation center in the medical device sector, and it will become the most important facility in China for ensuring life safety and biosafety.

　　High-end medical equipment is a critical support and reliance for the diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases. For a long time, China’s domestic high-end medical device industry has lacked core technologies, suffered from weak innovation capabilities, and lagged behind international advanced technologies in areas such as technology, quality, and design. As a result, both international markets and even the domestic market share have been monopolized by global giants. Take, for example, the artificial device known to all during the COVID-19 pandemic—the ECMO (also called an artificial lung)—which plays a vital role in saving critically ill COVID-19 patients. However, due to the difficulty in overcoming challenges related to core components and materials, China currently relies heavily on imports.

　　Localization of high-end medical equipment has become an urgent priority. However, since the R&D of advanced medical devices involves multidisciplinary integration and system-level consolidation, addressing the technological challenges in the innovative development of high-end medical equipment requires strategic planning, coordinated mobilization of resources from multiple parties, and collaborative R&D between cutting-edge technologies and widely applicable key technologies.