Shanghai, China – On December 23, Shanghai MicroPort Medical (Group) Co., Ltd. ("MicroPort®") attended the 19th Annual Meeting of China Health Economics Association ("CHEA") held in Beijing. Focused on the reform of healthcare supply, this conference attracted more than 1,500 experts and scholars from all over China. Established in 1982, CHEA is a national academic non-profit organization consisted of voluntary individuals and organizations engaging in studying, managing and teaching healthcare economics. With its contribution to the medical device industry and active exploration in the healthcare economics field, MicroPort® was accepted as one of the few enterprise members by CHEA in November 2016, and is also the first domestic medical device enterprise that gained CHEA membership.
In 2015, MicroPort® launched the health technology assessment of two medical devices Firehawk® Rapamycin Target Eluting Coronary Stent System ("Firehawk®") and WILLIS® Intracranial Stent Graft System ("WILLIS®").
The health technology assessment result of Firehawk® was released by Dr. Xiaohua Ying, Professor of Public Health School of Fudan University and Deputy Director of Key Lab of Health Technology Assessment of Ministry of Health. The relevant report "Health Technology Assessment of Firehawk® Drug Eluting Stent and XIENCE V in the Treatment of Single Coronary Artery Lesion in Single Vessel" was published on the 2015 fourth issue of Chinese Health Resources. According to the result, Firehawk® has better therapeutic effect in treating patients with single coronary artery lesion in single vessel, compared to imported stents of the same price. Besides, in treating patients with single coronary artery lesion in single vessel, as long as Firehawk®'s price is no higher than 107% of the imported stents, every unit of incremental cost of Firehawk® brings more additional unit of the measure of effect. Such result echoes the call of domestic enterprises for the fair principle of pricing by quality – products of the same quality should be priced the same while higher quality deserves higher price.
The health technology assessment result of WILLIS® was released by Dr. Jianwei Xuan, who is Professor of Florida State University, Advisory Professor of Public Health School of Fudan University, Research Fellow of the Research Center of National Drug Policy & Ecosystem, and President of Advisory Committee of Asia-Pacific Branch of International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. The result showed, compared with coil embolization treatment, WILLIS® has higher clinical efficacy and lower overall cost. Such study provides strong data to back WILLIS®'s cost-effectiveness, which eventually helped the device gain approval from Shanghai medical insurance governmental department to be included in Shanghai's medical device reimbursement list on April 29, 2016.
In the future, health technology assessment will provide important guidance for China's pricing and purchasing policies. Unlike traditional assessment methods of high-value consumable which only focus on the safety and effectiveness of a product, health technology assessment evaluates both cost and effects, which will play an increasingly more important role in China's medical reform. MicroPort will keep up with such trend to offer more cost-effective products.