Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) sank $150 million into a five-year plan to expand Chinese commercial operations, including establishing a wholly owned manufacturing site and developing training centers for Chinese health care providers.
The Natick, Mass.-based med-tech giant also plans to increase its Chinese workforce six-fold from 200 to more than 1,200 while investing further in R&D and clinical studies, which will drive the company’s sales force up to about 700 employees and require a fully staffed manufacturing infrastructure.
The target market in China exceeds $1 billion and is growing by about 20 percent each year, according to a press release, and the company expects its Chinese sales to top $500 million by 2017.
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The investment aligns with the company’s POWER business strategy, fitting under the “W”, which stands for “Win global market share.”
The strategy was developed under CEO Ray Elliott, who is set to retire at the end of this year.
The rest of the acronym stands for “Prepare people,” “Optimize the company,” “Expand our global sales and marketing,” and “Realign our business portfolio,” according to BSX’s website.
“We believe there are significant opportunities to accelerate our growth in China, where our market share is a fraction of what it is in the U.S. and Europe,” Larry Neumann, senior VP & president of emerging markets, said in prepared remarks. “Adding to the market potential is the growing affluence of the local population and the Chinese government’s commitment to spend $125 billion on its healthcare system in the next five years.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Massachusetts Medical Devices Journal is the online journal of the medical devices industry in the Commonwealth and New England, providing day-to-day coverage of the devices that save lives, the people behind them, and the burgeoning trends and developments within the industry.
