Tag: laboratories

Rapid consolidation in India’s medical diagnostics sector may force small local labs succumb to competition

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With at least half a dozen mergers and acquisitions by existing players and a heavyweight market entry by a pharma major in the last 12 to 16 months, India’s mostly fragmented medical diagnostics industry is getting consolidated and preparing itself for the next level of growth transformation and at the same time an unprecedented competition.

The top-rung service providers, including the newly-merged entities, in this Rs 700-billion market are also planning large investments in the next few years for expanding service portfolio as well as geographical reach. As a result, the industry is all set to see a breakthrough growth in terms of products and services. It essentially means the market will now see innovative tests, better technologies and enhanced access to novel diagnostics services.

The consolidation trend, according to market analysts, would also lead to further investments in the country’s medical tests and the imaging market in the next three to five years, mainly aimed at expanding market reach by the national players. This will leave the localised small laboratories just with the options of either surrendering to the buyout bids by the national players or succumbing to the competition.

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Key merger and acquisition deals in the country’s diagnostics services sector during the last 16 months included the Rs 636 crore purchase of Dr Ganesan’s Hitech Diagnostic Centre (Hitech) along with its subsidiary Centralab Healthcare Services (Centralab) by the country’s second-largest diagnostics chain Metropolis Healthcare; online pharmacy startup PharmEasy’s majority stake buyout in Thyrocare Technologies for Rs 4546 crore; Dr Lal PathLabs’ Rs 925 crore acquisition of Suburban Diagnostics; and the merger of Chennai-based Healyst Wellness Laboratory with Neuberg Ehrlich Laboratory.

In addition, one of India’s top drug makers — Lupin — made a big bang entry into the sector by launching Lupin Diagnostics almost seven months ago. Lupin’s foray into this healthcare service industry is part of its strategy to provide integrated healthcare in India, using its strong grip on the medical prescription market.

According to leading investor research organisation Edelweiss, this industry consolidation trend was imminent in the country. “The Indian medical diagnostics sector is highly fragmented and under-penetrated despite the presence of over one lakh labs. So, there is a huge opportunity for national players to consolidate and for organic expansion,” it wrote in its recent industry analysis report.

“With private diagnostic chains taking the lead with superior and quality services, highly accurate and wider test menu — resulting in market share gains — we expect the consolidation trend to continue in the sector going forward,” says Edelweiss’ senior research analyst Praveen Sahay in the report.

However, this rising competition is unlikely to lead to reduced costs to patients as the domestic industry is still mostly dependent on imported input materials such as test kits, reagents and other chemicals. Most of the technologies and tools for the new generation tests are also currently sourced from foreign manufacturers.

Also Read: One in every 36 infants still dies before first birthday in India: Data

The latest available industry data shows that the national players, including the top diagnostics chains such as Dr. Lal PathLabs, Metropolis Healthcare, PharmEasy-Thyrocare and SRL Diagnostics, all together command less than 20 percent market share currently. The remaining 80 percent is still shared by small local labs run by individual pathologists and regional players.

However, this position would reverse soon considering the rapid pace of industry integration witnessed in the market and large market expansion plans in process within the organised segment. The new generation genetic testing labs are another fast growing segment in the national diagnostics play as this industry has emerged as an attractive business component in India’s growing healthcare sector and is one of the fastest growing services in the country.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Coronavirus originated from China’s Wuhan lab: US President Trump

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The novel coronavirus, that has killed over 230,000 people globally so far and has shattered economies, emerged from a virology lab in the Wuhan city of China, US President Donald Trump claimed Thursday with a high degree of confidence.

“Yes, I have. Yes, I have,” Trump told reporters at the East Room of the White House when asked if he has seen anything at this point that gives him a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is where the virus originated.

The president, however, refuse to provide any details, except for saying that investigations are on and it would be out soon.

Asked what gave him a high degree of confidence that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

The president, however, did not hold his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping responsible for this. “I don’t want to say that, I don’t want to say that, but certainly it could have been stopped. It came out of China and it could have been stopped and I wish they had stopped it and so does the whole world wish they had stopped it.”

Reiterating that this is something that could have been contained at Wuhan ground zero, he said that China could have contained it. “They were either unable to, or they chose not to. And the world has suffered greatly.”

One of two things happened, he reasoned. “They either didn’t do it and you know they couldn’t do it from a competent standpoint or they let it spread and I would say probably it got out of control.”

“But there’s another case that how come they stopped all of the planes and all of the traffic from going into China, but they didn’t stop the planes and the traffic from coming into the United States and from coming into all over Europe,” he said, citing the example of Italy, the hardest-hit European country.

“This country (the US) is very lucky and I’m very lucky that I put the ban on China, as you know, very early on. In January, we put the ban on China and that was a very early day. That wasn’t a late day, that was an early day. Then, we later put the ban on in Europe,” he said.

Before holding them accountable, Trump said he wants to find out what happened. “I think we’ll be able to get a very good — a very powerful definition of exactly what happened. We’re working on it strongly now and I think it’s going to be very powerful,” he said.

“But they could have stopped it. They are a very brilliant nation, scientifically and otherwise. It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it. They could have stopped it, but they didn’t. And they stopped the planes from going to China, but they didn’t stop them from going to the rest of the world. What was that all about?? he asked.

“We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China,” Trump said.

When asked if President Xi misled him, Trump said, “Something happened. I don’t say misleading or not. I’ll let you know that. I mean, I’ll be able to give you that answer at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future.”

The entire world has suffered as a result of this, he said.

“We have had tremendous death and tremendous sorrow, sadness, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it. So, have most of the countries of the world. They’ve suffered tremendously. It’s something that is going to have to be dealt with. We’ll have to see,” said the president.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Coronavirus: 280 govt labs conducting Covid-19 tests, reporting to ICMR

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Indian Council of Medical Research on Sunday said that a total of 280 operational government laboratories in the country are conducting tests for Covid-19 and reporting to it.

Out of the 280 labs, 233 are conducting Real Time-PCR, while 41 will do TrueNat tests, and the remaining six the CBNAAT tests. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have the highest number of government labs to test for the viral disease.

Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Lady Hardinge Medical College, the National Centre for Disease Control, the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, the Army Hospital Research and Referral, the Maulana Azad Medical College, and the Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital are conducting them.

Besides this, ICMR also released a list of 90 private labs which will conduct the testing. Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana will have the maximum number of laboratories. In Delhi, 11 such labs will conduct the test.

Meanwhile, the total number of Covid-19 cases in the country mounted to 26,917 on Sunday evening, the Union Health Ministry said. Of the total cases, 20,177 are active cases, 5,913 people have recovered, and 826 people have succumbed to the disease.

Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state with a total number of cases rising to 7,628, followed by Gujarat which reported 3,071 cases and Delhi which has reported 2,625 cases, according to the Health Ministry data.

Also catch all the latest updates and trends on the novel coronavirus with CNBCTV18’s blog.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

There is a legitimate need to expand testing of COVID-19, says Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With the coronavirus now spreading at an alarming rate, accredited private labs would be allowed to test for Covid-19. However, this has raised several questions regarding costs, sanitation, hygiene etc.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson and managing director of Biocon; Viren Shetty, ED & group COO of Narayana Health and Naresh Trehan, CMD of Medanta in an interaction with CNBC-TV18 tried to clear some of the doubts.

Mazumdar Shaw said, “There is a legitimate need for expanding capacity of testing, which the government clearly recognises now. There is concern that if we don’t have some controls, things could run amok because there will be attempts to profiteer under this situation of panic. I also believe that we need to be very judicious about who is tested. I don’t think there is any need for everybody to be tested. So, from that point of view I think there is justification in what the government is concerned about. Having said that, I do believe that the private sector has to be a partner in this whole battle against this invisible enemy as it is often referred to.”

She further added, “We do have a large number of labs in the private sector which can test the Coronavirus and we need to put in place the capacity. Now as far as whether it is free or not, the understanding was if the government supplies the private sector with kits there is a possibility that some of the labs might be able to waive off their service charges and just do the test for free. By and large I think this whole question on whether free or not can be solved by maximum retail price (MRP) and also controlling it through prescription based diagnostic.”

“So peace can be the way forward. Government is willing to listen to whatever model the private sector comes up with,” she said.

Trehan said, “Most definitely we need to test wider and if the need be that the private labs need to be recruited – then definitely they should be. You can fix a price. If you do the exact costing of what it will take for the labs to collect the samples – one of the dangers that I have heard from the private labs is that if a large number of people are suspected to be Coronavirus, descent on their labs then they don’t have the capacity to deal with them. So the proposal is that they should pick up the samples from home in a viral transport medium, do the test and deliver the results. The real cost can be easily calculated. There are enough labs in this country who have the PCR and all the capabilities.”

He further added, “If we are all on the same platform, we have the same rules of the game the same cost price – I would go a little further – there are some people who will not be able to afford and who need it so every lab can volunteer 10 percent of the test or x number of test to do free, so that will help the people who are unable to afford it. So this is a time for us to put our heads together and in our CSR, we should be able to help or assist the people and the government in achieving the objective of trying to contain it.”

When asked how to prevent profiteering in such situation Shetty said, “In terms of profiteering at the time of panic there is nothing you can do to prevent that, but the fact is government has all the ability to fix the prices of the test and the other one is we are a free market. If you allow every private lab to do the test, some labs will decide they are five star labs, they will charge more for it, some labs will decide we will charge it at the budget and for those who can’t afford it they can go to the government labs anyway for the past two months the government labs have been doing it for free. The problem is we are very under testing our population, we are doing only 5 test per million people so we have to take a more aggressive response to this because this is a very aggressive disease.”

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow