Interview

'We Are Planning to Launch Cost-Effective Indigenous Ventilator'

Medion Healthcare, formerly Meditronics Sales & Services Private Limited, entered into the critical care market segment in 2001 by launching pulse oximeters and patient monitors. It entered at a time when the critical care market segment was still at a nascent stage market with few players providing solutions. It aimed at providing affordable solutions in the market. Nikunj Gada, Director Marketing, Medion Healthcare speaks to Express Healthcare about the company's growth plans. Excerpts:

Nikunj Gada Director Marketing Medion Healthcare

In which segments of critical care does your company focus on?

Medion Healthcare in the past eight years has been concentrating on providing critical care equipments— mainly for use in intensive care. Today, we have all the equipments like patient monitors, pulse oximeters, ventilators, syringe infusion pumps and defibrillator, which are the most common equipments required in any Intensive care set-up.

What is the uniqueness of the technology used for these products?

We offer a range of products which have some unique features. For instance, the patient monitor, we offer, is semi-modular design which is a unique product. We offer five parameters (ECG, Spo2, NIBP, RESP & TEMP) which are commonly used as standard and other parameters like IBP, ETCO2, Cardiac Output and Multi-gas which are used on critical patients only, are modular cassette type which can be plugged in any monitor.

In syringe infusion pump, we provide auto mode which allows users to automatically calculate the drug rate for delivery. In ventilator, we offer our Model Graphnet, which has 12.1" TFT Monitor with 3 Graphs and 3 Loops in real-time which allow full panorama view of patient ventilation with just one glance. The ventilator also has an option of having ETCO2 monitoring. inbuilt nebuliser, circuit compliance, respiratory mechanics etc.

What is the USP of your company?

High quality systems, reasonable price topped with reasonable after sales service cost

What market opportunities and trends do you witness in Indian critical care market? How do you plan to tap it?

Critical care market segment is huge in India. Market demand for ventilators and patient monitors is increasing with each passing day. We plan to launch various models for ventilators from low cost to high-end ones which can be targeted to any kind of hospitals and would match customers demand with the type of model required to suit their financial cost.

Medion Healthcare is also investing currently in R&D— by which we are planning to launch cost-effective indigenous ventilators. We are also going in for manufacturing collaboration with our principals. This is to further make the product manufactured in India at the same time make products more affordable.

What are the obstacles that plague the Indian critical care market? What measured do you suggest to overcome the challenges?

The main obstacles is brand image which normally drives buyers to buy ventilators. We are making efforts to reach customers and promote them the product directly by offering them products to use for their approval.

Based on that we can convince them about our product quality & performance. However we would like customers not to blindly go in for a brand name & check products available, which offer more features and are available at reasonable price tag.

In how many countries are you present and what is the company's strength in India?

Currently, we have six registered offices in India with our head office located in Mumbai and four regional offices. We have currently 130 employees across India and we are hiring more people to reach and support the customers. Apart from the direct sales and service force, we have channel partners in various places offering our products to the customers and we are also looking at adding more channel partners to have a better reach.

How has the company grown over the years in India and worldwide in the critical care segment?

Medion Healthcare since its incorporation and venture into the criticalcare market segment has continuously been growing at a high pace. In the past eight years, Medion Healthcare has become a prominent player in the critical care market segment and is known as a major player.

With just three years since our start of ventilators, we have installed over 350 units that proves our ability, product quality and performance.

We are looking at promoting aggressively our range of ventilators for the time to come and we hope to have a good presence in the market.

What are your expansion plans? What strategies you plan to adopt for expansion?

Medion Healthcare is currently trying to add more products in the critical care market segment. We are adding in manpower both for sales as well as after sales services and trying to create a strong work force, which would eventually help us, increase our sales & also help us in our new product offering & reaching out to the mass.

After sales services remain our top most priority and we are focusing on delivering the best services to our valued customers. At the same time, we are currently investing in setting up a high-quality manufacturing unit which would be the need to enter into manufacturing collaborations for ventilators, anaesthesia workstations for the time to come.

healthcare@expressindia.com