Meeting with the Embassy of the Netherlands on Cooperation in the Field of Healthcare

2021-04-09 | Beijing

The responsible business managers of the Healthcare Equipment (HCE) Working Group and COCIR China met with the newly appointed counselor for health, welfare and sport on cooperation in the field of healthcare. 

The Netherlands has many small and medium size enterprises (SME), manufacturing high-quality medical devices or providing excellent homecare- and senior citizen care, but are not yet present on the Chinese market. The Dutch Embassy would like to support these companies to develop the Chinese market and wants to learn what challenges newcomers on the Chinese market have to overcome.

The HCE WG / COCIR briefed the Dutch embassy on the main issues, which will be further elaborated in the new position paper:

Regulatory Affairs

The large number of regulations on medical device regulations has been published for public consultation. Manufacturers need to adjust to a changing regulatory environment. In general, the regulatory environment is improving, but registration is still relatively slow and resource-consuming.

Market Access

According to Chinese law, products manufactured in China by foreign-invested enterprises are considered to be "made in China" and can equally compete on the Chinese market. However there are single cases on local/provincial level, where foreign brands are excluded from participation in tenders. 

Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Insurance

like in most European countries, disposable medical devices need to be paid / reimbursed by the Chinese public healthcare insurance, otherwise sales will be restricted to a small niche market. The public is under pressure to cut costs, this may lead to procurement of cheap, low quality devices, while European manufacturers mainly target the highend-market. The HCE WG plans to organise a joint workshop of Chinese and European stakeholders on value-based procurement of medical devices.

For SME not yet present in China, there are two projects under the roof / cooperating closely with the chamber, giving support free of charge for European SME: the SME IPR help desk and the EU SME Centre.