Siemens Healthcare is on an aggressive mode to accelerate public private partnership (PPP) to propel early diagnosis of chronic diseases in India. In this regard, it is planning to partner with the state governments across the country.
The state governments play a key role in the PPP model of healthcare.
“We have inked a pact with the government of Uttar Pradesh to install our medical equipment at 22 medical centres. While 19 centres are equipped with our machines, we have another 3 centres more to go,” said Vivek Kanade, executive director, Siemens Healthcare.
“We see all state governments to be a major player in the public private partnerships model to address this market segment. Moreover, Union Government’s Ayushman Bharat too will be a platform to chip in our medical equipment expertise,” Kanade told Pharmabiz.
In order to capitalize the Indian healthcare opportunity, Siemens Healthineers has now commissioned its future ready medical imaging manufacturing facility in Bengaluru. The next-gen facility is collocated with the company’s R&D center at Bengaluru to provide solutions from diagnostic imaging and advanced therapies.
The company has pumped in Rs.200 million in the new manufacturing facility which builds on the Rs.25 billion invested in the R&D Center so far. It will be engaged in the production of mobile C-arm radiology system Cios Fit and computed tomography systems from the Somatom go. platform for the India and other emerging markets . Operations will start immediately in this new ISO13485 (2016) certified state-of-the-art facility which is spread across 5,000 square meters.
Now the company’s 50 percent of software development for healthcare comes out of India. Syngo an integrated imaging software has an India contribution too. It is here collocating a manufacturing facility with our R&D center in Bengaluru marks a significant step in strengthening our presence in India, which is one of our important markets. We will start with around 70 employees and the workforce will be extended in three phases by fiscal year 2025, said André Hartung, executive vice president, Computed Tomography(CT) and incoming president, Diagnostic Imaging, Siemens Healthineers.
“The facility will make CTs based on our trendsetting Somatom go. platform that we co-created with 500 customers in 11 countries. It combines novel detector technologies for radically enhanced work-flow efficiency, expanded clinical applicability, improved patient experience and meeting the financial requirements of healthcare providers,” he added.
“In India, the company has a workforce of 3,150 employees of which R&D accounts for 2,100 and 1,000 sales-service engineers. Our attrition is 7 percent and we are proving a 94 percent employee retention,” said Hartung.
Providing details of the Cios Fit, the company’s latest made in India C-arm, Peter Seitz, executive vice president, Surgery, Siemens Healthineers stated, that the equipment was created to address demands of India with high patient loads and the need to perform multiple procedures. It is simple to use and has fewer moving parts for higher reliability.
According to Gerd Hoefner, MD and president, Siemens Healthcare, “The collocation of the manufacturing with R&D center is especially important as it will enable us to deliver value to customers faster. Over the years, the R&D center at Bengaluru has grown into a digital hub for us accounting for over half of all the software engineering talent within Siemens Healthineers. It is also the largest such center within the company globally.” |