Telangana To Now Set Mark In Medical Device Sector: KTR

Telangana has written its success story in the life sciences sector and now repeating it in the medical devices sector, with 25 companies signing up to set up their plants so far in what is touted to be the country’s largest medical devices park in Sultanpur.

6 manufacturing facilities will launch their operations on the same day in July and by December, Sahajanand Medical Technologies (SM), Asia’s largest stent manufacturing facility, will commence its operations, disclosed Industries Minister KT Rama Rao.

Speaking on the sidelines of the BioAsia-2020 summit, Rama Rao maintained that Medical Devices Park at Sultanpur was a great deal of success with nearly 25 companies signing up.

Based on feedback from the medical devices industry, the State government is planning to create common testing facilities in Sultanpur in partnership with the industry.

The minister said that of the 276 acres of land at Sultanpur, only 80 acres are left. The government would examine the possibilities of expanding the Medical Devices Park as more land is available adjacent to the current site.

He pointed out that the most important thing was to ensure that the manufacturing efforts should lower the costs of medical devices since affordability, accessibility, availability, and awareness among people and government was most crucial in the healthcare segment. As governments focus on healthcare, there can be more and more manufacturing happening in India. As a result, the cost of production would come down.

The minister noted that the most important thing in the medical devices space was innovation, prototyping, and manufacturing. For prototyping, T-Works that is coming up in June/July this year would be of help.

Having T-Works would add value to the overall sector. All of these falling in the right places will be the largest answer.

He recalled that the government promised to be the industries’ advocate in terms of bringing regulatory and other changes in the Union Government’s domain.

Rama Rao said he was shocked to know that it was cheaper to import devices rather than manufacture them here, which was against the philosophy of ‘Make in India’. “I asked the industry to give me inputs so that the State government could take it up with ministries concerned”, he asserted.