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?