4.5 Assembly Line

At present, various giants in the IVD market are competing the five mainstream market segments: biochemistry, immunity, molecular, POCT, and clinical testing. In the process of enterprise development, both endogenous growth and external mergers and acquisitions are important growth paths. However, because of many segments of the IVD in China, the scale is still relatively limited in the short term despite the rapid growth; moreover, there are many domestic and foreign manufacturers competing with each other in each segment, thus, it is very difficult to obtain an absolute market share in a segment. Therefore, the active development and horizontal merger can allow enterprises to have multiple growth points, which is an important choice for the continuous development of enterprises. In the current competition environment, many companies continue to expand product lines and create the second and third growth curves.

Biochemical immune cascade, also known as fully automatic biochemical immune analysis system or biochemical immunity integrated machine, has a high degree of automation and fast and accurate testing ability, mainly including control computer, data server, sample processing system, biochemical module, light-emitting module, and connection track. Representative manufacturers include Roche, Abbott, Beckman, Siemens, Mindray, Snibe, and Autobio. At present, the domestic hospital clinical laboratories have a low automation level and most of them are still in the sage of modular assembly line. There are only more than 1000 modular assembly lines in stock nationwide. The Grade III hospitals are main markets of large-scale, fully automatic laboratory automation demands. The main application is the assembly line of foreign brands. There is a great room for the improvement of penetration rates of the whole laboratory automation system and other modular assembly lines, which provides an opportunity for the development of domestic automated assembly lines.

Mindray has innovatively integrated four independent testing systems of biochemistry, immunity, hematology, and coagulation through a modular combination. With China’s first fully autonomous testing module-assembly line M6000, it brings a new era of the assembly line. Snibe works with Thermo Fisher to jointly build the overall solution of Satlas-TCA laboratory automation, and integrates the pre- and post-processing systems, and testing and analysis systems such as immunology and biochemistry, reflecting the strong integration capability and high expansibility. Autobio works with Toshiba to form the Autolas B-1 Series, a fully automatic biochemical immune assembly line, and based on the tailor-made design and services, to provide more flexible and efficient assembly line solutions for the medical laboratories. Other companies such as Runda Medical and Tellgen are actively promoting their own company’s assembly line, and Maccura is actively deploying biochemical and luminescent instruments in recent years. It is expected to enter the biochemical immune cascade or the assembly line system in the future.

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