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Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | January 01, 2012
From the January 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Manufacturers see opportunity
The growth is borne out by the numbers. Between 2003 and 2006, Brazil’s diagnostic imaging and monitoring equipment market grew 20 percent per year, while in the rest of the world it only grew 4 to 5 percent per year, Steve Rusckowski, CEO of Philips Medical Systems, explained in a statement a few years ago.
How big is the market? It depends on who’s reporting the numbers. Estimates for Brazil’s medical device market are around $3.6 billion to $4 billion, according to two Espicom reports from this year. Imports total about $1.8 billion, according to Espicom, although Hospitalar puts that figure much higher ($3.65 billion).
As expected, the country mainly relies on imports for high-tech equipment that can’t be made locally, with the majority of that equipment coming from North America or Western Europe.
Of course, exporting to Brazil isn’t the only path for making inroads into the economy. Companies like GE are making investments locally too. GE’s Contagem factory, for instance, will cost the company $50 million over the next 10 years. GE Healthcare’s parent business also plans to open a massive Global Research Center in Rio de Janeiro next year.
Other manufacturers are planting roots in Brazil. Philips has purchased a number of local businesses to expand its influence there. Last year, it bought Wheb Sistemas, a clinical informatics systems company. In 2008, it bought Dixtal Biomédica e Tecnologia, a maker of patient monitors used in hospitals. But one of its biggest moves was in 2007, when it bought the country’s largest X-ray manufacturer, VMI-Sistemas Medicos, as part of a plan to seize on emerging markets that had been in the works since the previous year. In 2008, the company also opened, in Brazil, the first plant for making MRIs in all of Latin America, according to Espicom.
Siemens Healthcare also says it plunked $50 million in the country last year. Siemens, which says it employs 10,000 people in the country, also intends to invest $600 million in business activities there over the next five years, according to an interview between health care division’s global CEO Hermann Requardt and the Brazilian daily paper DCI. For the past 10 years, Siemens has made the MULTIX B X-ray system in the country, and sold about 750 units, he said in the interview. Now, nearly a third of all digital diagnostic imaging in Brazil is performed on its equipment, Requardt said.
