Increased Healthcare Spending Will Fuel a Boom in Med-Tech Sector

+ Official Coverage on Channel NewsAsia website

19 November 2012
Channel NewsAsia – Singapore Tonight

Increased healthcare spending will fuel a boom in med-tech sector

Med-tech firms in Singapore plan to ride the growth wave triggered by Asian healthcare reform and increased spending. Spire Research and Consulting was invited to share its thoughts on Channel NewsAsia – Singapore Tonight.

Siemens Medical Instruments planned to increase its investments in R&D by 10 percent next year to develop products for the Asian market. The firm had also invested SGD10 million in an automated hearing aids manufacturing facility, where manpower will be reduced by half while increasing output capacity by 75 percent. Also, Siemens had invested SGD20 million in a master’s degree program to train audiologists for the field – a move believed to help the firm grow revenues by 10 percent next year.

It is believed that the med-tech sector will continue to grow in the region, as Asian consumers and governments are spending more on healthcare. India, for instance, is committed to doubling healthcare expenditure to 2.5 percent of its GDP (approximately USD45 billion) by 2017.

John Tan, Business Development Director for Healthcare and Biomedical at Spire Research and Consulting, shared that, “The healthcare expenditure in Asia is undertaken by state-owned or government hospitals. Growth in terms of uptake of medical devices, growth in terms of overall market size in Asia have not seen a big slowdown as compared to the US and European markets.”