So far in medical electronic equipment, it is still difficult to see the presence of Chinese local chips. What are the special requirements for chips in the seemingly unfathomable medical electronics field? How can local chip makers have the opportunity to enter this hugely profitable market?
Medical electronic devices can be divided into three major categories, including medical imaging (such as color ultrasound, nuclear magnetic, black and white ultrasound, X-ray machines, etc.); physiological characteristics (such as monitors, electrocardiographs, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose meters, etc.); Clinical tests (such as biochemical analyzers, etc.) Among them, the market for medical imaging diagnostic equipment is the largest. Due to the increasing aging of the global population and people’s increasing emphasis on the prevention of chronic diseases, the demand for initial diagnostics through ultrasound examination continues to increase, and the market scale continues to expand. According to market research institute TransparencyMarketResearch predicts that in 2012 the global ultrasound diagnostic equipment market will reach 48.178 billion U.S. dollars, by 2017 it will reach 6.114 billion U.S. dollars, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 4.9%.
For a long time in the past, the ultrasound diagnostic equipment market was monopolized by several international giants such as GE, Siemens, Philips, etc., and the brand advantage was excessively magnified, resulting in high product prices. Until recent years, as Chinese companies entered this market, prices were brought to a more reasonable level (the average market price was about one-third of those five years ago). At present, there are many ultrasonic diagnostic equipment manufacturers in the country. In Shenzhen alone, Mindray, Kaili Technology, Lanyun, Libang, Enpu, Wilder, and Beijing Bai, etc. are among the manufacturers, of which Mindray manufactures all-digital ultrasonic diagnostics. With advanced system technology and high imaging quality, it accounts for a large share of the domestic market and has been exporting to participate in international competition.
From the perspective of market sales, the ratio of Chinese manufacturers’ exports to domestic sales is about 6:4. There are two main reasons for this phenomenon: one is that the capacity of overseas markets is greater, and the second is that compared with the excessively stringent management policies of the Chinese medical device market, the entry threshold for overseas markets is lower, and the products are launched on the market. The cycle is shorter.
IC performance has a decisive impact on medical diagnostic accuracy
Shenzhen Lan Yun Industrial Co., Ltd. was established in 1994, specializing in R&D and manufacturing of medical equipment. Currently, it has introduced to the market six series of products: digital ultrasound, radiology imaging, clinical testing, hemodialysis, respiratory anesthesia, and medical IT. There are more than 1,100 employees, and the output value and sales volume increase by 40% year by year. Meng Guohai, vice president of the company, said: "Ultrasound diagnostic equipment is the most complex design of all medical electronic devices. The level of line-position control technology directly determines the detection accuracy."
From the working principle, the working process of ultrasonic diagnostic equipment can be divided into two major parts: signal acquisition and signal processing. Its design difficulty lies in that when the ultrasonic wave propagates in the human body, its energy will be absorbed by the human tissue. With the increase of the depth of detection, the ultrasonic energy will be greatly attenuated, the signal dynamic range is extremely large, and the detection difficulty is increased. In order to improve the accuracy of the equipment, it is necessary to use the TGC depth time gain compensation circuit, that is, to use a certain voltage curve to control the gain of the amplifier, so that ultrasonic echoes at different depths can obtain different magnifications, thus playing a compensating role. .
The related ICs include operational amplifiers, single-/dual- and octal-based data conversion systems, ADCs, digital signal processors, variable gain amplifiers, and high-voltage analog switches. Without reliable chips, it is impossible to design reliable medical equipment at all, and the chips need to be fully compatible with each other. That is, when multiple different chips are paired together, system errors will not occur due to compatibility problems.
Because of the small amount of ICs for medical electronic equipment, the requirements for product quality and stability are extremely high. Therefore, the supply of chips in this field is monopolized by international manufacturers such as Texas Instruments, ADI, Hitachi, and Maxim. The presence of local suppliers. Texas Instruments is more powerful in digital terms and can provide off-the-shelf algorithms for specific applications such as blood analysis; ADI has a stronger technology accumulation in terms of simulation, and has done its best in terms of high integration, such as the 927x series of low noise amplifiers (LNA), Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA), Anti-Aliasing Filter (AAF) and Multi-Channel Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) are integrated in a single chip; while Maxim's solution selects analog integration, ADC independent thinking .
Shenzhen Kaili Technology Co., Ltd. exceeded its volume in 2011 with 4,000 units, second only to Mindray, ranking second in the country. Zhou Wenping, vice president of the company’s R&D center, also confirmed that Kaili’s core ICs are mainly based in Europe and the United States. Even Japan and South Korea have few companies among them. Even the general-purpose resistance containers are all selected by Taiwan suppliers. . In this regard, he explained: “After the development of the Shenzhen ultrasound industry year by year, an agglomeration effect has been formed, so the upstream IC supplier’s service support is adequate and will not be inconvenient because it is an international supplier. Although the unit price of the local product is low, due to Uncertainty about product quality stability, if the equipment later repair rate is too high, the overall cost is actually higher, so the whole machine can not easily try."
In addition, he also stated that on the basis of stability, as the demand for portable devices grows in the market, the degree of integration will be a major consideration for future chip supplier selection.
Portable equipment expands ultrasound applications
The next wave of growth in the ultrasound market will be the proliferation of portable ultrasound equipment and the gradual penetration of emerging-area/clinical markets. In the past, because of the bulkiness of ultrasound equipment, most of them can only be deployed in the ultrasound department of large medical institutions; now, with the advent of portable ultrasound equipment, the emergency department, anesthesiology department, etc. have shown a strong interest in it. The functional requirements are not all-inclusive, thereby expanding the market demand; and in the future, as the performance of portable devices is greatly increased year by year, it can completely replace traditional large-scale equipment in many occasions. On the other hand, with the continuous improvement and expansion of medical and health care measures in Asia and Latin America and the growing demand for medical care, these regions will become the major markets for the purchase of new equipment in the future.
Kaili Technology launched the first portable color ultrasonic instrument SSI-1000 in China in 2004, which is a leader in the field of portable ultrasound. Zhou Liping said that the initial portable ultrasonic focusing feature is portability. This is at the expense of storage space and image quality. Nowadays, portable ultrasound with greatly improved image quality has rapidly occupied the market. Open up the latest generation of portable ultrasound equipment has reached the highest 128 channels, the volume is close to the thickness of the iPad, the service life of 15 years.
Meng Guohai also said: “In recent years, the growth rate of portable medical electronic devices has been significantly higher than that of large desktop computers. The increase in the integration level of upstream devices has reduced the design threshold for the miniaturization of devices, resulting in a significant increase in the performance and accuracy of portable devices. With the continuous expansion of market capacity, it is believed that there will be more SoC solutions supporting more channels."
It should be pointed out that portable does not mean "home-based". Due to the special nature of medical diagnostic equipment, the current major use groups of portable medical equipment are still medical institutions. In the future, if we want to truly achieve home use, we must achieve “non-invasiveâ€. Taking the portable blood glucose meter currently on the market as an example, there is a risk of infection due to the need to gather blood from a finger and it is difficult to widely spread it. The future development trend of portable ultrasound equipment must achieve a quantifiable measurement, that is, through a large number of clinical data to extract a representative number of test results for "combined identification", which will be important for some rural health institutes with weak medical technology significance.
Chinese manufacturers actively seize the low-end market
Since there are only a few suppliers of chips for medical electronics applications on the market, there are no major differences between domestic manufacturers and those of the world's largest manufacturers such as GE, Philips, and Siemens. The main difference lies in the complexity of signal algorithms. In the short term, it is difficult for Chinese manufacturers to catch up even beyond. However, Chinese manufacturers' product prices can be 1/4 of the latter, so there is a good living space in the low-end market.
In addition, because the price is almost the only advantage, domestic manufacturers have a lot of pressure to reduce costs. The current major measures to reduce costs are to simplify the design platform and increase bargaining power. The former optimizes the mature design platform and simplifies the implementation of unnecessary functions. The latter mainly depends on the increase in the volume of orders to provide a more favorable supply price to the original manufacturer.
Although international manufacturers have also begun to attempt to enter China's low-end market in recent years, Zhou Liping believes that international companies do not have a foothold in this area, because local manufacturers have better services, even if the price of similar products is more advantageous.
In addition, policy support also has a great impact on Chinese medical equipment suppliers. During the period from 2009 to 2010, thanks to the Chinese government's “Medical Going to the Countrysideâ€, Blue Rhyme low-end black-and-white B-mode ultrasound machines and X-ray machines have achieved a good shipment. The medical device products generally have a service life of 5~ In 8 years, Lan Yun is expected to usher in a new wave of replacement peaks in five years, stimulating the growth of color super product shipments.
Local chips can be cut into the market through downstream linkage
From a product design perspective, global medical equipment suppliers generally do not have chip design and development capabilities, and they have high reliance on upstream chip suppliers, and due to the obvious trend of miniaturization, medical equipment suppliers are eager to obtain more highly integrated products. Performance single-chip design. From the market perspective, due to obvious advantages in terms of price, local medical equipment suppliers still have a certain living space in the low-end market, but with international manufacturers rushing down this market, it is believed that the future price war will become increasingly fierce.
What needs to be seen is that at present, domestic medical electronic device manufacturers are mainly in close contact with downstream medical institutions, and are rarely in touch with upstream local chip suppliers. For example, when it opened, it cooperated with a number of top-three hospitals in Shenzhen to listen to doctors' feedback on product performance and jointly develop customized functions. In the future, local chip suppliers and planners may wish to learn from this cooperation model, take the initiative to go out and strengthen the interaction with the entire machine manufacturer, and intervene in product design from the early stage of R&D, and seek market entry points from the perspective of customized design services.
Medical electronic devices can be divided into three major categories, including medical imaging (such as color ultrasound, nuclear magnetic, black and white ultrasound, X-ray machines, etc.); physiological characteristics (such as monitors, electrocardiographs, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose meters, etc.); Clinical tests (such as biochemical analyzers, etc.) Among them, the market for medical imaging diagnostic equipment is the largest. Due to the increasing aging of the global population and people’s increasing emphasis on the prevention of chronic diseases, the demand for initial diagnostics through ultrasound examination continues to increase, and the market scale continues to expand. According to market research institute TransparencyMarketResearch predicts that in 2012 the global ultrasound diagnostic equipment market will reach 48.178 billion U.S. dollars, by 2017 it will reach 6.114 billion U.S. dollars, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 4.9%.
For a long time in the past, the ultrasound diagnostic equipment market was monopolized by several international giants such as GE, Siemens, Philips, etc., and the brand advantage was excessively magnified, resulting in high product prices. Until recent years, as Chinese companies entered this market, prices were brought to a more reasonable level (the average market price was about one-third of those five years ago). At present, there are many ultrasonic diagnostic equipment manufacturers in the country. In Shenzhen alone, Mindray, Kaili Technology, Lanyun, Libang, Enpu, Wilder, and Beijing Bai, etc. are among the manufacturers, of which Mindray manufactures all-digital ultrasonic diagnostics. With advanced system technology and high imaging quality, it accounts for a large share of the domestic market and has been exporting to participate in international competition.
From the perspective of market sales, the ratio of Chinese manufacturers’ exports to domestic sales is about 6:4. There are two main reasons for this phenomenon: one is that the capacity of overseas markets is greater, and the second is that compared with the excessively stringent management policies of the Chinese medical device market, the entry threshold for overseas markets is lower, and the products are launched on the market. The cycle is shorter.
IC performance has a decisive impact on medical diagnostic accuracy
Shenzhen Lan Yun Industrial Co., Ltd. was established in 1994, specializing in R&D and manufacturing of medical equipment. Currently, it has introduced to the market six series of products: digital ultrasound, radiology imaging, clinical testing, hemodialysis, respiratory anesthesia, and medical IT. There are more than 1,100 employees, and the output value and sales volume increase by 40% year by year. Meng Guohai, vice president of the company, said: "Ultrasound diagnostic equipment is the most complex design of all medical electronic devices. The level of line-position control technology directly determines the detection accuracy."
From the working principle, the working process of ultrasonic diagnostic equipment can be divided into two major parts: signal acquisition and signal processing. Its design difficulty lies in that when the ultrasonic wave propagates in the human body, its energy will be absorbed by the human tissue. With the increase of the depth of detection, the ultrasonic energy will be greatly attenuated, the signal dynamic range is extremely large, and the detection difficulty is increased. In order to improve the accuracy of the equipment, it is necessary to use the TGC depth time gain compensation circuit, that is, to use a certain voltage curve to control the gain of the amplifier, so that ultrasonic echoes at different depths can obtain different magnifications, thus playing a compensating role. .
The related ICs include operational amplifiers, single-/dual- and octal-based data conversion systems, ADCs, digital signal processors, variable gain amplifiers, and high-voltage analog switches. Without reliable chips, it is impossible to design reliable medical equipment at all, and the chips need to be fully compatible with each other. That is, when multiple different chips are paired together, system errors will not occur due to compatibility problems.
Because of the small amount of ICs for medical electronic equipment, the requirements for product quality and stability are extremely high. Therefore, the supply of chips in this field is monopolized by international manufacturers such as Texas Instruments, ADI, Hitachi, and Maxim. The presence of local suppliers. Texas Instruments is more powerful in digital terms and can provide off-the-shelf algorithms for specific applications such as blood analysis; ADI has a stronger technology accumulation in terms of simulation, and has done its best in terms of high integration, such as the 927x series of low noise amplifiers (LNA), Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA), Anti-Aliasing Filter (AAF) and Multi-Channel Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) are integrated in a single chip; while Maxim's solution selects analog integration, ADC independent thinking .
Shenzhen Kaili Technology Co., Ltd. exceeded its volume in 2011 with 4,000 units, second only to Mindray, ranking second in the country. Zhou Wenping, vice president of the company’s R&D center, also confirmed that Kaili’s core ICs are mainly based in Europe and the United States. Even Japan and South Korea have few companies among them. Even the general-purpose resistance containers are all selected by Taiwan suppliers. . In this regard, he explained: “After the development of the Shenzhen ultrasound industry year by year, an agglomeration effect has been formed, so the upstream IC supplier’s service support is adequate and will not be inconvenient because it is an international supplier. Although the unit price of the local product is low, due to Uncertainty about product quality stability, if the equipment later repair rate is too high, the overall cost is actually higher, so the whole machine can not easily try."
In addition, he also stated that on the basis of stability, as the demand for portable devices grows in the market, the degree of integration will be a major consideration for future chip supplier selection.
Portable equipment expands ultrasound applications
The next wave of growth in the ultrasound market will be the proliferation of portable ultrasound equipment and the gradual penetration of emerging-area/clinical markets. In the past, because of the bulkiness of ultrasound equipment, most of them can only be deployed in the ultrasound department of large medical institutions; now, with the advent of portable ultrasound equipment, the emergency department, anesthesiology department, etc. have shown a strong interest in it. The functional requirements are not all-inclusive, thereby expanding the market demand; and in the future, as the performance of portable devices is greatly increased year by year, it can completely replace traditional large-scale equipment in many occasions. On the other hand, with the continuous improvement and expansion of medical and health care measures in Asia and Latin America and the growing demand for medical care, these regions will become the major markets for the purchase of new equipment in the future.
Kaili Technology launched the first portable color ultrasonic instrument SSI-1000 in China in 2004, which is a leader in the field of portable ultrasound. Zhou Liping said that the initial portable ultrasonic focusing feature is portability. This is at the expense of storage space and image quality. Nowadays, portable ultrasound with greatly improved image quality has rapidly occupied the market. Open up the latest generation of portable ultrasound equipment has reached the highest 128 channels, the volume is close to the thickness of the iPad, the service life of 15 years.
Meng Guohai also said: “In recent years, the growth rate of portable medical electronic devices has been significantly higher than that of large desktop computers. The increase in the integration level of upstream devices has reduced the design threshold for the miniaturization of devices, resulting in a significant increase in the performance and accuracy of portable devices. With the continuous expansion of market capacity, it is believed that there will be more SoC solutions supporting more channels."
It should be pointed out that portable does not mean "home-based". Due to the special nature of medical diagnostic equipment, the current major use groups of portable medical equipment are still medical institutions. In the future, if we want to truly achieve home use, we must achieve “non-invasiveâ€. Taking the portable blood glucose meter currently on the market as an example, there is a risk of infection due to the need to gather blood from a finger and it is difficult to widely spread it. The future development trend of portable ultrasound equipment must achieve a quantifiable measurement, that is, through a large number of clinical data to extract a representative number of test results for "combined identification", which will be important for some rural health institutes with weak medical technology significance.
Chinese manufacturers actively seize the low-end market
Since there are only a few suppliers of chips for medical electronics applications on the market, there are no major differences between domestic manufacturers and those of the world's largest manufacturers such as GE, Philips, and Siemens. The main difference lies in the complexity of signal algorithms. In the short term, it is difficult for Chinese manufacturers to catch up even beyond. However, Chinese manufacturers' product prices can be 1/4 of the latter, so there is a good living space in the low-end market.
In addition, because the price is almost the only advantage, domestic manufacturers have a lot of pressure to reduce costs. The current major measures to reduce costs are to simplify the design platform and increase bargaining power. The former optimizes the mature design platform and simplifies the implementation of unnecessary functions. The latter mainly depends on the increase in the volume of orders to provide a more favorable supply price to the original manufacturer.
Although international manufacturers have also begun to attempt to enter China's low-end market in recent years, Zhou Liping believes that international companies do not have a foothold in this area, because local manufacturers have better services, even if the price of similar products is more advantageous.
In addition, policy support also has a great impact on Chinese medical equipment suppliers. During the period from 2009 to 2010, thanks to the Chinese government's “Medical Going to the Countrysideâ€, Blue Rhyme low-end black-and-white B-mode ultrasound machines and X-ray machines have achieved a good shipment. The medical device products generally have a service life of 5~ In 8 years, Lan Yun is expected to usher in a new wave of replacement peaks in five years, stimulating the growth of color super product shipments.
Local chips can be cut into the market through downstream linkage
From a product design perspective, global medical equipment suppliers generally do not have chip design and development capabilities, and they have high reliance on upstream chip suppliers, and due to the obvious trend of miniaturization, medical equipment suppliers are eager to obtain more highly integrated products. Performance single-chip design. From the market perspective, due to obvious advantages in terms of price, local medical equipment suppliers still have a certain living space in the low-end market, but with international manufacturers rushing down this market, it is believed that the future price war will become increasingly fierce.
What needs to be seen is that at present, domestic medical electronic device manufacturers are mainly in close contact with downstream medical institutions, and are rarely in touch with upstream local chip suppliers. For example, when it opened, it cooperated with a number of top-three hospitals in Shenzhen to listen to doctors' feedback on product performance and jointly develop customized functions. In the future, local chip suppliers and planners may wish to learn from this cooperation model, take the initiative to go out and strengthen the interaction with the entire machine manufacturer, and intervene in product design from the early stage of R&D, and seek market entry points from the perspective of customized design services.
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