Healthcare firm ‘excited’ over China’s innovation

China’s staunch commitment to promoting high-quality development and further opening up its market to foreign investors and companies will help accelerate innovation, which will allow hightech companies to flourish and help foreign enterprises to operate successfully in the nation, said a top executive of Insightec, a global healthcare company headquartered both in Haifa in Israel, and Miami in the United States.

Founded in Israel, Insightec is the first in the world to launch a magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) platform to treat targets in the brain for movement disorders without incisions.

Maurice R. Ferre, CEO and chairman of Insightec, said China’s pursuit of high-quality development and deepening of reforms is beneficial for people and businesses alike.

As a large market with increasing emphasis on the use and advancement of technologies, particularly in medicine, China presents an opportunity for growth and innovation of technology, as well as for innovation-focused companies addressing the challenges of an aging population.

“As a foreign enterprise, we are excited to seize the available opportunities to expand our operations and services in China and cooperate with local providers and partners,” he said, adding the company will continue to make investments in China.

The company is very bullish in China, and expects the country to be its largest market, thanks to the nation’s huge domestic market with aging population, and cost-effectiveness of the company’s products, Ferre said.

As China enters a new phase of dual-circulation development pattern and promotes higher-level opening-up, its adherence to improving the business environment and its innovation-driven strategy are providing stronger impetus to increase foreign investment, experts said.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce showed China’s actual use of foreign capital surged to 607.84 billion yuan ($94 billion) in the first half, up 28.7 percent year-on-year and up 27.1 percent over the firsthalf figure of 2019.

In the healthcare sector, where a series of major policy reforms have been introduced since 2015, internationalization and innovation have become an inevitable trend in the country’s pharmaceutical industry in order to encourage innovation and improve quality healthcare accessibility and affordability.

Zhang Fei, associate director of the Institute of Foreign Investment, which is part of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said China has provided substantial investment returns to many foreign-funded companies, making a solid contribution to the world economic recovery and the establishment of a globally open economy.

She predicted sectors related to technological revolution and industrial transformation, like high-end manufacturing, smart terminals, autonomous driving, sensors, 5G and digitalization, will become the key areas of foreign investment during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

Ferre said business environment in China for foreign companies has been very favorable, and while applying “a lot of regulatory rigor”, Chinese authorities have been “receptive” and have given a pathway for approvals for the company’s technology that provides incisionless treatment to patients suffering from essential tremor and tremordominant Parkinson’s disease.

The company entered China in 2014 with an office in Shanghai, and thanks to the favorable business environment in China for foreign companies, its latest product, called the Exablate Neuro system, was smoothly introduced in the Chinese market.