IN BRIEF

Riding the trend towards increased medical technology innovation in Asia to harness the region’s opportunities, 30 global medical technology companies including Biosensors, Becton Dickinson, Alcon and Hill-Rom—as well as local start-ups like HealthSTATS and Veredus Laboratories—now carry out R&D in areas such as technology and product development from Singapore. In 2011, Singapore’s medical technology sector contributed about S$4.3 billion in output and about 9,000 jobs.

Dedicated infrastructure such as the Medtech Hub, Biopolis and Tuas Biomedical Park provide a plug-and-play environment for the bio-cluster community. In addition, medical technology companies are able to tap on innovative ideas from partnerships with public-sector researchers and clinicians, advanced technologies provided by global industry leaders and test-bedding infrastructure in hospitals. Key factors that attract these medical technology companies to Singapore include the support of an established electronics and precision engineering industry, availability of contract manufacturing services, reverse logistics services and sterilisation services as well as excellent integrated and value-added logistics services.

OUR EDGE

GLOBAL MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY HUB

As Asia’s leading location for medical technology, Singapore is home to over 30 medical technology companies which have set up commercial-scale plants to produce medical devices for the regional and global markets. In addition, all of the top 10 medical technology companies have their regional headquarters in Singapore, from which to drive business expansion in Asia. Global leaders that have set up manufacturing, R&D and headquarter functions in Singapore include AB SCIEX, Baxter International, Becton Dickinson, BIOTRONIK, Hoya Surgical Optics, Life Technologies, Medtronic and Siemens Medical Instruments.

Part of Singapore’s burgeoning biomedical sciences sector, the medical technology industry almost tripled its manufacturing output from S$1.5 billion in the year 2000 to about S$4.3 billion in the year 2011. Over the same period, its manpower base more than doubled from about 4,000 to 9,000. By the year 2015, the medical technology sector targets to achieve S$5 billion in manufacturing output.

A variety of medical products, ranging from syringes and catheters, to research instruments and scientific analytical equipment, are manufactured in the country, including 10 per cent of the world’s contact lenses, over 70% of the world’s microarrays, and about half the world’s thermal cyclers and mass spectrometers.