CIIE in the eyes of global CEOs | Siemens Healthineers:a perfect occasion to showcase technological advancements at CIIE
Editor's notes:
It is the fifth time for the China International Import Expo to take place in Shanghai, and CIIE has been increasingly recognized by global businesses as a great platform to get connected with China and beyond. Again, we invite some of them to voice their opinions, which is to shed light upon the CIIE this year!
Elisabeth Staudinger, Member of the Managing Board at Siemens Healthineers
China has been making great strides towards a healthier population, especially since the Healthy China 2030 strategy was published in 2016. Through this ambitious blueprint, it is clear that the Chinese government is committed to building-up public health, disease prevention and innovation for the health and well-being of the Chinese people.
As such, China is now one of the main global hubs of health-care transformation – not merely as a market or a production site but, crucially, as a place for high-level research and development.
For us at Siemens Healthineers, a global leader in medical technology, we are proud to be able to support China's dynamic transformation and, in the following, I would like to outline some examples.
China as an R&D hub
We operate four Innovation Centers worldwide. We chose these locations because they are the best places in the world for innovative work. As such, since September 2021, one of our Innovation Centers is located in Shanghai. This shows how central China is for the global health-care industry.
Located in Zhangjiang Science City, our Innovation Center serves to further integrate our company into the Chinese innovation-ecosystem. The Center is an interdisciplinary space where we work with Chinese startups to make their ideas happen and where we collaborate with universities, hospitals, and other partners.
China is among the leading centers for research and development worldwide. Our work with our Chinese partners will thus contribute to realizing the potential inherent in medical technology – in China and around the globe.
Complete supply chains within China
It's remarkable that China only started its astonishing industrialization 40 years ago. During the early phase of this development, the buzzword was that China was "the workbench of the world". Now, the Chinese economy's role in the global context is so much more than that.
A case in point is, again, our cooperation with our partners in China and more specifically in Shanghai. We do not simply build products here. We also develop them in Shanghai, and export products developed and manufactured in China to more than 150 countries in the world.
A local company
I believe this trend is only going to accelerate. We see ourselves as a local company in China and are further localizing the development and manufacturing of full product lines in the county.
This means that we are working to enhance the innovation capability of Chinese suppliers and to strengthen the competitiveness of the industry.
We are also increasing our research and development activities in China, according to Chinese market needs.
Investing in Shanghai
Shanghai is already home to many of our most important assets. This includes our regional headquarters, as well as our production sites for X-ray and computed tomography.
For example, we are investing 3 billion yuan (US$413 million) in a new laboratory diagnostics factory in Shanghai that will go online in 2023.
It will be Siemens Healthineers' first production base of this kind in the entire Asia-Pacific region, and it will play an important role as a center of research and development – further underlining China's importance along the entire value chain.
Equitable health care
A further implication of our acting as a local company in China is that we continue to enhance our engagement in China's health-care system.
For instance, there is a program under the current Five-Year Plan to set up a number of new national and regional health care centers to further develop the accessibility of excellent health care everywhere in China.
This is possible because along with its economic success over the past decades, China has made equally remarkable progress with regards to health and health care. This process in ongoing, and Siemens Healthineers is well placed to contribute to it.
This is because a core part of innovation in medical technology and of our work revolves around digitalisation, telemedical care and the application of Artificial Intelligence.
These technologies contribute greatly to making health care more precise, and more accessible. In other words, medical technology is a key factor for improving health care and making it more equitable.
The long haul
The China International Import Expo or CIIE this November is a perfect occasion to showcase such technological advancements. The Expo was inaugurated 2018, and we have been a participant each year.
But our involvement with China goes back much further.
As a company, Siemens has been active in this country for 140 years. Siemens Healthineers, its younger offshoot, has been present in China for the last 30 years.
We were one of the first medical technology companies in the world to take up operations in China. We are fully committed to further our operations here. We know the potential of working in this country.
I also know this from personal experience. I've been living in this part of the world for many years, and I've formed close friendships here. I, and we at Siemens Healthineers, know that Shanghai is ideally suited for innovative work.
Shanghai will continue to be our "base camp" in China, and China will continue to be a main center for research and development worldwide.
