A workshop was held under the auspices of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), headed by Mahmoud Saqr, entitled “The Importance of Localizing Medical and Laboratory Devices Technology”.
The opening speech was delivered by Assistant President of the ASRT Amr Farouk. He highlighted the Academy’s efforts and achievements in developing the medical device industry in Egypt.
Mostafa Al-Wakeel, CEO of BioBusiness, moderated the first session, entitled “The Research and Development Dilemma”. It discussed the process of developing and manufacturing medical devices, which should follow the V model and the return on investment in the case of manufacturing low-tech medical devices, which is very little, but in the case of manufacturing high-tech medical devices, the return on investment becomes much higher.
It is noteworthy that the volume of spending on research and development operations for medical devices during the past year amounted to about $49bn.
The United States of America topped the list of the most countries investing in the field of medical devices, as it accounts for 55% of these investments in the world, while the proportion of Europe as a whole reached 14%. Africa and the Arab region do not have any investments in this important industry.
Investment opportunities as a provider of technology development services Outsourcing for large medical companies instead of working on complete devices, in which the development departments are often busy with a number of large projects, where the investments directed towards this type of projects last year amounted to about $2.5bn.
During the workshop, the expected demand for medical devices within the Egyptian market was reviewed, and the study carried out by former Minister of Health Adel El-Adawy, which raises the status of the medical sector and the services provided to the Egyptian people.
The study indicated that during the coming period, a large number of hospitals, intensive care beds and nurseries should be added so that the national goal of providing good health service to the Egyptian people can be covered.
This reflects that the Egyptian market is a very promising market, and the current situation can be invested in to bring more investments to the health sector, with a plan to develop technology producers and transform them from covering the local market to compete in the international market.
The workshop set a prescription for the challenges facing the medical device industry in Egypt, where the attendees agreed to increase spending on research and development in Egypt, and despite the great role played by the Academy of Scientific Research in this field, there must be greater support from the government in cooperation with the sector To increase investment in research and development because of its importance in the development of the industry in general.
The attendees stressed that there are problems in investments and financing, and that the serious investor is not interested in this type of industry, as the return on this industry is delayed by more than 10 years, while it is heading towards high-risk investment in software companies, in which the return on investment ranges between two to three years.
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