Medical Devices market highly unexplored!

Dr GSK Velu is currently conducting a workshop on the opportunities for start-ups in Pharma and Bio-tech sectors. I knew these were hot sectors. But, my God this is HUGE!



Dr GSK Velu is a BITS Pilani Pharmacy graduate who went on to start Metropolis Health Services. He is currently the Managing Director of the company. He sponsored a half page ad in Pulse (our Intra-BITS newsletter). Hence, a special soft corner for him. Wait, let me concentrate on the talk!



Hey, am back! He is fielding questions,so let me use this time to tell you about the workshop. A couple of bullets :

A Biomedical engineer should typically spend some time in an engineering college and some in a med school. He exhorted BITS Pilani to tkae up this initiative.
Lack of standards in the Medical Devices market (when he mentions Medical Devices he means in-vivo devices. No net right now, so can't wiki to see what that means!)
India is better at innovation. China : re-engineering and copying! India rocks at value addition!
Biomedical engineers in huge demand (policy makers listening?)
Skill labs are labs with mannequins and models to test out medical technologies. India's first one coming up in Chennai.
Patient assisting devices like implants not doing well in India because of lack of a conducive research and testing eco-system.
Interaction with the doctors very important! Lots of examples of failures because of not doing this! IIT Madras has got a Rs. 100 crore grant from Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt of India. But, due to no interaction with doctors, no commercial product yet.
I think the last point can be applied to any sector without much loss of truth! The interaction with end user, your customer, right from the day when you sit at the drawing board is very very essential for the success of you start-up!



You know how this Pharma graduate entered the Medical technology market? He was doing his PS-2 at a Cancer institute where a sophisticated instrument was gathering dust as no one knew how to install it. Dr Velu, the quintessential BITSian, used his knowledge of electronics, IT and a lot of other things (remember he was a Pharma grad) to get it up and running. An impressed professor and the realization of the huge opportunity turned him into an entrepreneur soon enough!



Inspiring talk! Feels good to hear a successful BITSian. Infuses a fresh dose of ambition into all of us!