More Indian Start-Ups Believe The Pandemic Worked As An Enabler For Innovation, Compared To Their APAC Counterparts

* Per the Medtronic-Economist Impact study, over three quarters of Indian healthcare start-ups (76.7%) believe that the pandemic was an enabler for innovation, unlike only 54.7% in the APAC region.

India Medtronic Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) — a global leader in healthcare technology, today released findings from Medtronic-Economist Impact survey whitepaper titled ‘Asia Pacific’s Healthcare Technologies Ecosystem: Enhancing Start-up and SME success’, written by the Economist Impact and supported by Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).

The findings from the Medtronic-Economist Impact whitepaper were centered around three main areas – access to healthcare, collaboration and talent. The study revealed that an overwhelming number of start-ups in India (76.7%) believed that the pandemic acted as an enabler of innovation in the space. Only 3.3% of respondents from India considered the pandemic a disrupter of innovation, unlike 34.7% of the respondents in the APAC region. Moreover, a majority of respondents (76.7%) believed that treatment was one of the greatest unmet needs within the patient/disease pathway in the country, while more than half (53.3%) thought that testing/screening was one of the biggest requirements. All participants agreed that the health market in India was very competitive, rather than seeing collaboration amongst the various players.

The whitepaper aims to establish the present state of the healthcare technology sector in Asia Pacific and explores the challenges that start-ups and small-medium enterprises face in establishing and scaling up their business. This first-ever study on the region’s MedTech sector involves inputs from 150 executives from startups and business enterprises in APAC, including India. The paper also includes in-depth interviews with several industry leaders from the healthcare technology sector as well as from company representatives in the technology sector such as SAP.iO Foundries and Microsoft Health. The whitepaper was released at the Medtronic APAC Innovation Conference held in Singapore on 16th March 2022. Themed ‘Accelerating Healthcare Technology Innovation’ the conference saw the attendance of over 200 delegates from start-ups, government institutions, and healthcare practitioners along with Medtronic’s partner organizations. Mr. Shakthi Nagappan, director Life Sciences and Pharma & CEO Hyderabad Pharma City Ltd & BioAsia, Government of Telangana was also one of the keynote speakers at the conference.

Madan Krishnan, vice president and managing director, Medtronic India, said, “Innovation is critical in ensuring effective and timely disease management, not just in India, but across the world. The aim of Medtronic’s Open Innovation programs across APAC is to drive innovation – through internal ideation and now external partnerships as well. In India, we’ve always recognized the importance of collaborative innovation, whether it is with Government, startups, hospitals and other like-minded partners to offer localized solutions to address unmet needs. Our recent collaborations have been with Govt. of Telangana to expand our R&D center in Hyderabad; with Stasis Health Private Ltd to improve access to connected care with their bedside multi parameter monitoring system and with Govt. of Kerala’s promoted Section 8 Company, Additional Skill Acquisition Programme Kerala (ASAP) to equip final year students with advanced skill sets and improve overall employability within the healthcare industry.”

The study also showed that almost 80% thought that the Government was very supportive towards innovations, and 33.3% agreed and 60% strongly agreed that talent recruitment was a significant challenge for early-stage start-ups.

Last year, the company launched the Medtronic Open Innovation Platform (Medtronic OIP) with the aim to bring together various innovators across the Asia-Pacific as well as several stakeholders from the healthcare ecosystem. This was followed in October 2021 with the launch of the Medtronic APAC Innovation Challenge to give recognition to innovations in the healthcare space. Both the challenge and the conference reiterate the company’s commitment to enabling innovation in the industry and come on the heels of Medtronic’s plan to invest up to US$50million under its Open Innovation Platform over the next five years. The Medtronic APAC Innovation Challenge saw 323 start-ups and business enterprises from 46 countries from the Asia Pacific region and beyond, vying for a potential collaboration with Medtronic valued up to US$200,000. India’s Niramai Health Analytix was recognised as one of the top 10 innovative start-ups in the challenge.

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