Twenty-three domestic companies have exported medical equipment to 55 countries, the director general of Health Ministry’s Department of Medical Equipment said.
Reza Masaeli added that the main export destinations include Russia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Croatia, Mehr News Agency reported.
“More than 280,000 kinds of medical equipment are produced in Iran,” he said. An Iranian knowledge-based firm for the first time launched a mass production line for medical ventilators used in the Intensive Care Unit in January.
Iranian experts and technicians reportedly spent 88,000 hours over three years on research and development to manufacture the mechanical ventilator.
A medical ventilator is used to move breathable air into and out of the lungs and assist patients with respiratory problems. A failure to get oxygen into the heart tissue is one of the most common causes of death linked to heart diseases.
According to the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, 590 medical equipment production units were operating in the country with a combined annual turnover of $2 billion as of 2017.
Latest available data show close to $29 million worth of medical equipment were exported in the fiscal 2015-16, mainly to Syria, Iraq, Germany, Belarus and the UAE.
Business Monitor International research group’s 2015 report on Iran’s medical device sector predicted that Iran’s medical device market would reach $1.28 billion in 2018.
According to BMI, the industry generated $832.5 million in 2013 and its revenues are expected to grow at a moderate compound annual growth rate of 9.1% to 2018. The market size was estimated using a trade-based approach, looking at imports, and then adding in domestic production, minus exports.
