It has been observed that often people tend to claim that the medical devices developed by them are cheaper as compared to the imported ones. One needs to look into these claims with a pinch of salt before up-scaling them for commercialization. Development of a genuine low cost medical device is ultimately all about innovation and requires lot of creative and technical thinking.
In India, sufficient technical and infrastructural capability is present to replicate the functionalities of some of the imported machines. But the machines can’t be really claimed to be low cost. Often during comparisons, people forget that the expenses involved in manufacturing and marketing a device requires lot of investment and all these get added up to the cost of the machine in the market and in business, the aim is to earn revenue unless one is into philanthropy.
If one strips down all these additional expenses, then one would find in most of the cases that the cost of the imported machine is controlled by the local market prices of the components. This can be appreciated from a simple example. Suppose, a machine designed in India uses standard UL approved components. If two such machines are built with one set of components bought from the US market and the other set bought from the Chinese market, one would find that though there won’t be any difference in functionality / quality of the two machines, both being built from UL approved components, the one made from the US components would be more expensive, simply because the Chinese components are cheaper. So, technically speaking, the device is not really low cost compared to its imported counterpart on a level playing field.
In India, sufficient technical and infrastructural capability is present to replicate the functionalities of some of the imported machines. But the machines can’t be really claimed to be low cost. Often during comparisons, people forget that the expenses involved in manufacturing and marketing a device requires lot of investment and all these get added up to the cost of the machine in the market and in business, the aim is to earn revenue unless one is into philanthropy.
If one strips down all these additional expenses, then one would find in most of the cases that the cost of the imported machine is controlled by the local market prices of the components. This can be appreciated from a simple example. Suppose, a machine designed in India uses standard UL approved components. If two such machines are built with one set of components bought from the US market and the other set bought from the Chinese market, one would find that though there won’t be any difference in functionality / quality of the two machines, both being built from UL approved components, the one made from the US components would be more expensive, simply because the Chinese components are cheaper. So, technically speaking, the device is not really low cost compared to its imported counterpart on a level playing field.
