Peng Yang, global vice president of Danaher and president of Danaher China, recently said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald during the First J.P.Morgan Global Healthcare Conference, Shanghai Forum, "We believe that China's biopharmaceutical industry will usher in the next outbreak period, the global biomedical industry will also develop rapidly, so we will attach great importance to this industry."

21st Century: IVD (In Vitro Diagnostic Products) is also a very important business segment of Danaher. What is the current situation of localization of IVD products?

Peng Yang: We are actively promoting the localization of IVD products in China. Beckman Coulter, a subsidiary of Danaher, opened its first factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu in 1997. This year, we have added an additional investment of more than one billion U.S. dollars to establish Danaher Group’s China Diagnostic Platform R&D and Manufacturing Base Project. This is our company's first global center integrating R&D, production, customer experience and other functions. We hope to use this platform to develop and produce IVD products that are more suitable for the needs of the Chinese market. This is a strategic direction of ours, the purpose is to shorten the distance between us and our customers. We can treat China's business as a complete local company because it has very complete functions. We can convey the Chinese market, service, quality, new product development, etc. to technical personnel in production R&D and supply chain as soon as possible and improve the overall response speed, which is an advantage of local Chinese companies. We hope to learn from them and speed up the response speed of multinational companies in China. Therefore, we must take root in China for the overall supply chain from production and R&D to sales to distribution.

21st Century: Is there any possibility in the future in China for global?

Peng Yang: Yes. In the field of flow cytometry where the Danaher Life Science Platform is located, we have already had a very good "in China, for the world" experience. For the IVD field, we hope to take two steps. For one, we will focus on doing a good job in the Chinese market. We believe that China IVD market will surpass the United States, to become the world's largest market. We have discovered some new business opportunities in our communication with customers. For another, China's leading position in the fields of digitization and artificial intelligence will create some opportunities for us to develop new products or new business models. Once our new business and model are successful in China, they can be extended to other countries. As we have our own sales and operation teams and service teams in various countries and regions around the world, we only need to train them. Therefore, we will focus on the global market on the basis of doing a good job in the Chinese market.

21st Century: What do you think about the prospects of China IVD industry?

Peng Yang: I think it's very good. But let me talk about challenges first. After the introduction of the new medical insurance policy and centralized procurement of drugs have a profound impact on the diagnostic industry, which has changed some of the past business models, such as the sales of medicines and medical equipment. I think these policies will be extended to the IVD industry. Meanwhile, this is a national policy. We should follow the direction of China's development and think about how to support the policy to succeed. As long as we do not sacrifice quality, the current reform is a favorable thing.

Although relevant companies are currently facing many challenges, these policy changes cannot change the bright prospects of the entire industry. China's population is larger than that of the United States, but China's medical expenditure is less than half of that of the United States, which shows that the potential of China's diagnostic industry is not small. In addition, with the development of China's economy, the Chinese requirements for health are increasing, and the maturity of the diagnostic industry is far from coming. It is still on the rise and there may be some twists, but we are very optimistic about the prospects of IVD in China. This is also our confidence to continue to increase.