Bridging the Gap from Bench to Bedside: China Takes a New Look at Moving Innovative Health Care Ideas into the Marketplace

The phrase "made in China" is everywhere, just not in our health care system. China ranks as the world's third-largest medical device market and is expected to become the second-largest market in the world in five to seven years. However, almost all of China's hospitals, not to mention its larger first-class hospitals, use imported devices. For a very long time, foreign-made products have dominated the middle- and high-end markets, leaving to Chinese companies the low-end products with low profit margins. According to recent statistics provided by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Medicine and Health Products, 90% of value-added high-tech devices, which account for 70% of China's medical device market, are imported. Why can't Chinese companies compete with multinational biomedical corporations? Is it because of a lack of money or intelligence?