During a panel discussion of the medical and health sector of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on March 11, 2011, Wang Guoqiang, vice minister of health and director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that the main reasons for the "difficulty" and "high cost" of medical treatment are the high price of medicines and the high cost of checkups. The main reason for this is the high price of medicines and the high cost of checkups. At present, the basic drug system has been implemented, but most of the medical examination equipment is still imported, which leads to problems such as excessive medical care, and has become the main cause of the current "difficult to see the doctor" and "expensive to see the doctor". He suggested that the science and technology sector focus on domestic medical equipment research and development projects.
Guo Wangqiang said the domestic medical market is dominated by imported major instruments and equipment, and the localization rate of medical instruments is very low. Although the basic drug system that has been put in place aims to bring down drug prices, it is not comprehensive to bet all on solving the problem of expensive medical care.
Guo Wangqiang believes that the so-called "difficult to see the doctor" and "expensive to see the doctor" mainly includes two aspects, one is the expensive medicine, the other is the expensive examination, the expensive examination is mainly the expensive instruments and equipment. "This is spent at a high price, loans to buy back, these equipment there is wear and tear, repayment of loans and other problems, and thus diagnostic costs, inspection costs will be correspondingly high."
"The production of domestic high-precision equipment is imminent," he said, suggesting that the Ministry of Science and Technology can organize a special development of these instruments and equipment, including PET/CT, nuclear magnetic and so on.
Guo Wangqiang said the research of medical equipment is not something that medical units can undertake, but requires the convergence of various technologies as well as multi-disciplinary experts to work together. "Sometimes we coordinate and cooperate only when an emergency occurs, but the usual joint research is not enough." According to him, the result of sectoral division and each managing its own section leads to higher costs and inefficiency. At the same time, it will be difficult to solve the problems of medical costs not coming down, massive monetary outflow and excessive medical care. If the production of large-scale domestic medical equipment, the development of the national industry, but also reduce medical costs.
To this, a member of the meeting responded, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been in the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" to determine the relevant large-scale medical equipment for the end of the major special projects, and will be in the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" began to be implemented, at present, PET / CT has been the development of units.