Suzhou, China – From September 6 to 9, China Medical Devices Design & Startups Competition & Global Device Week (2018) took place in Suzhou, China, as did Medical Fair China (MFC 2018) and China Medical Innovation Forum (CMIF 2018). Shanghai MicroPort Medical (Group) Co., Ltd. ("MicroPort®") appeared at the events, presenting the achievements in the areas of platform building and innovation, technological innovation and management innovation.
During the opening ceremony, Professor Junbo Ge, who is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of Department of Cardiology of Zhongshan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, said in a speech that there would be no progress without innovation. Professor Ge said that a high degree of emphasis has been placed on innovation from the top-level design to the medical device industry, as innovation is continually driving the development and progress of the cardiovascular discipline and helping cardiologists overcome hurdles one after another. During the speech, Professor Ge especially mentioned the innovative results achieved by MicroPort® in the field of coronary stent. He said that the MicroPort® stent has progressed from Firebird®, Firebird2® to Firehawk®, and pulled off a leap from the innovation of copy and improvement to the disruptive innovation. Recently, clinical data of Firehawk® TARGET AC study in Europe was published on the website of the world leading medical journal The Lancet, which is the first time that clinical data from a China manufactured drug eluting stent has been published in The Lancet since its first publication nearly 200 years ago. Professor Ge said that with the innovation- driven development elevated to a national strategy, the cardiovascular intervention segment currently is growing rapidly with more and more original innovative outcomes. For instance, the commercialization of innovation surrounding medicine, industry, science, research and application is of the most importance among the things that the industries closely watch. It is playing a key role to drive the sustained development of the medical device industry.
Professor Wei Guo from the vascular surgery department of Chinese PLA Hospital gave a speech titled the Development Direction of Businesses from a Vascular Epidemiology Perspective. Professor Guo said that despite being a long journey accompanied with pains, innovation can solve the problems and key issues for the development of the industry, which is of significant meaning, especially for the development of the medical device companies. In this respect, every stage, including idea verification, product R&D, patent application, in vitro study, animal trial, clinical study, product application, commercialization and market entry, requires the close cooperation and communication with clinicians, as the cooperation between the medical and engineering communities is pivotal to the achievement of original innovation and major clinical breakthroughs. Professor Guo said that the vascular surgery and medical device industry of China are experiencing a prospering period with the blessings of the timing, location and talents, along with the government support, inflows of capital, which combined lay a firm groundwork for the Chinese vascular surgery to grasp the core technology, update innovation mechanism and achieve self-updating.
MicroPort® is focused on independent innovation and always makes high-intensity investment in R&D, with an accumulated investment of tens of billions of Chinese yuan (including those of the overseas subsidiaries in history). MicroPort® currently holds over 3,500 patents or patent applications (about 2,000 patents or patent applications overseas). The innovation ambition of the MicroPort® employees stems from the motto of "The Patient Always Comes First", where the rationale and motive behind all the business activities originate in patients, for the patients and are used in patients, and all ideas of innovation are from the doctors, for the doctors and attributed to the doctors. The MicroPort® employees firmly believe that everyone is born with equal rights to medicine, health, and the pursuit of a longer life. Therefore, the MicroPort® employees strive to work with people from all walks of life, to actively create the revolutionary medical technologies to allow global citizens to enjoy the above rights.