Inaugural Address at the State of the Art Manufacturing Facility Relisys Medical Devices Ltd, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh

Technology and Innovation for Cost Effective Stents

I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of Cardiac stent manufacturing facility at Relisys Medical Devices Ltd (RMDL) at Hyderabad. My greetings to Prof Soma Raju, Dr. Krishna Reddy, cardiac specialists, scientists, technologists, clinicians, pharmaceutical personnel and distinguished guests. Since RMDL is in the business of medical devices and systems particularly the stent which is indeed a highly competitive product for a great societal mission. I would like to share with you my thoughts on competitiveness.

Law of Development

I was studying the development patterns and the dynamics of connectivity between nations, especially in trade and business. As you all know the world has few developed countries and many developing countries. What is the dynamics between them and what connects them? Developed country has to market their products in a competitive way to different countries to remain as developed country. For the developing country to get transformed into developed country, they too have to market their products to other countries in a competitive way. Competitiveness is the common driving factors between the two types of nations. Competitiveness has three dimensions: quality of the product, cost effectiveness and product is in the market just-in-time. Indeed this dynamics of competitiveness is a common factor between developing country and a developed country. There is a relationship between the core competence and the competitiveness of the country. Innovation is the capital that promotes competitiveness. For a country like India with huge untapped market potential in health care products, innovative methods of making the state-of-the-art products available at affordable costs for different segments of society call for unique strategies.

Innovation is the capital

I was studying the Global Competitiveness Report for the year 2006-07. There I find in terms of Growth Competitive Index ranking Switzerland is ranked 1, Finland is ranked 2, Singapore is ranked 5, US is ranked 6, Korea 24, UAE 32, India 43 and China 54. I am glad to find that India has moved up in competitiveness to 43. Some time back, the President of Finland, Her Excellency Mrs. Tarja Halonen, visited Rashtrapati Bhavan. During the discussion, I asked the President of Finland, what is the significance and how Finland is always in the first few positions in the competitiveness index during the last few years. She gave three reasons: (1). Education, Education, Education ? it is the foundation for the Finland?s Competitiveness, (2). Life Long learning is promoted in Finland ? people continuously are in learning mode, (3). Women are empowered with Education. Of course we have similar experience in the country, wherever we have empowered the women with education, they have excelled in Human Development Index. Growth competitiveness is determined by the innovative ability of any institution or organization. This innovation arises from institutional initiative and the R & D productivity of the firm. Innovation is the prime mover for engineering design, engineering development, value addition and production.

Strategies for enhancing competitiveness

Even though there is a potential to increase the demand, market for Stents, demand will always be for the best available stent from the patient angle. Particularly for Indian companies, it is all the more important to face multiple challenges including from foreign manufacturers. For meeting the competitiveness of the products like stents, it is important to build a database of all the supplied stents by your company. and establish product quality over a period of time. In addition continuous research has to be the focus to bring down the cost at increased quality. Fortunately, Relisys Medical Devices Ltd at Hyderabad derives clinical data base from CARE hospital. Above all, it is essential to bring the confidence among the Indian patients that stents manufactured by the RMDL are comparable to the imported stents though its cost is much lower. Continuous technology flow on manufacturing, continuous improvement of design inputs from cardiologists and patients are important factors for improving competitiveness in the market.

Strength through partnership

I am happy that RMDL is exploring the possibility of contract manufacturing for international players. This will not only enhance the quality of the product due to the stringent quality requirement of the international company, it will also increase the capacity utilization of the plant. The aim of Relisys should be to market stents and catheters and medical disposables at half the price of its competitiors while maintaining high quality and higher profit margin through higher volume of sale. This will involve expanding R & D strengths in metallurgy, drug delivery and evaluation by creating linkages with educational institutions and national R & D laboratories.

Conclusion

"Today, research in stents has to be to compare different types of DES, and also between the newer kinds of drug combinations to be coated on stents to find a solution to the problem of late stent thrombosis". The ideal stent should be completely inert, not activate the clotting system and will disappear after a given period. Is it possible? You experts can make it possible. With these words, I inaugurate the Cardiac stent manufacturing facility at Relisys Medical Devices. My best wishes to the Relisys team for success in their mission of providing an ideal cardiac stent to the cardiac patients at an affordable cost.

May God bless you. 
Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam