Facilitating Market Entry for Technologies in Rural Health
– An ICTPH Strategy Paper

Neil Parikh, ARIJIT SARKAR

Market Size

The increasing awareness of the “base of the pyramid (BOP)” market is an opportunity for those interested in providing services to better access this population. A recent Monitor Group report cites the BOP Indian healthcare market at approximately $18 billion 1, indicative of the opportunity and interest of both the public and private sector. Based on ICTPH’s indicated interest in point of care diagnostics (PCDs), narrowing the scope to only PCDs still leaves lucrative market potential. The Indian PCD market in 2007 ranged from $100 million to $250 million and is projected to double by 2012 2. Acknowledging that these PCD figures encompass all economic tiers, part of this projected growth is accounted for by increased accessibility of healthcare by lower classes including the BOP.

Approaching the market from another angle, in the unlikely event that the private sector were to completely reject ICTPH’s service offerings, at a minimum ICTPH could provide services to non-profit global health organizations that are developing such products, which still represent a large market. Organizations such as PATH, FIND, CIMIT, and WHO all have extensive portfolios of global health products that require “end-to-end” solutions. Currently this encompasses nearly 50 pipeline technologies and hundreds of existing products in different disease areas.

Finally, in addition to the private and NGO markets, the government, national programs, and academic institutions contribute to the market potential. In fact they are the traditional organizations that have been serving the BOP population. Accordingly, ICTPH could provide its research facilities and expertise to support or supplant governmental or national program epidemiologic and disease surveillance. For example, the Government of India (with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as the implementing agent) is involved in a multiyear, $88.64 million Integrated Disease Surveillance Project 3. In fact, other countries’ governments are active contributors to this market. In this past year the United States Department of Health and Human Services committed nearly $30 million to US-India collaborations including a “Low-Cost, Diagnostic, and Therapeutic Medical Technologies Research Collaboration (NIH-NIBIB): To promote collaboration with India’s Department of Biotechnology on the development and use of low-cost medical technologies and devices for healthcare in resource-limited settings. 4

1 Emerging markets, Emerging Models – Monitor Group, 2009.     (Continue reading)

2 Natexis Bleichroeder, Association, Kalorama 2009, Piramal Healthcare Investor Presentation 2008     (Continue reading)

3 http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects     (Continue reading)

4 http://globalhealth.gov/news/factsheets/fs020409.html     (Continue reading)

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