Support for education and training of domestic medical equipment in Incheon
Incheon City, which is leading the domestic bio industry, is expected to play a pivotal role in the future along with synergy effects by selecting the related industry, the national public offering project for medical devices.
The Incheon Metropolitan Government announced on the 12th that it was finally selected for the “Project to Establish a Wide-Area Domestic Medical Device Education and Training Support Center” that was conspired by the Korea Health Industry Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
This project was proposed by the Incheon Metropolitan Government to the Korea Health Industry Promotion Agency of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2020 to “build a medical device training center.” The purpose is to establish a dedicated infrastructure that can educate, train, and display domestic medical devices to provide use experiences to consumers such as medical staff and overseas students to activate purchases.
The city selected Incheon Techno Park (TP) as the host organization. It has formed a cooperative network with 21 hospitals such as Noters, Gachon University Hospital, Inha University Hospital, Incheon Medical Association, Incheon Dental Association, Korea Gastroenterological Endoscopic Research Foundation, and Korea Medical Device Industry Association. In addition, after writing a business plan reflecting opinions from all walks of life, he applied for the public offering project in April.
There are about 260 medical device producers in Incheon. This is only 3% of the total 7,200 in Korea, and it was in a poor situation compared to other competing local governments in terms of infrastructure.
Accordingly, the city expressed its strong will to develop the medical device industry from barren to central. As a result of making all-out efforts to select the project by establishing a cooperative system with private companies and promoting the project quickly, it was selected as a great achievement.
The support center will use the Noters Co., Ltd. facility, and a total of 15.8 billion won will be spent on the project, including 6.25 billion won in state funds, for five years until 2026. Here, projects such as operating education and training programs for domestic medical devices (building support centers), establishing usability evaluation infrastructure, supporting permanent exhibitions and marketing links, and linking medical device industry comprehensive support centers will be promoted.
Active support for medical device education and training
Considering that most domestic medical device producers are having difficulty developing products and developing markets due to their small and small scale, and many medical staff are turning a blind eye to domestic medical devices due to lack of experience in use, the city plans to push ahead with the project as soon as possible.
Through this project, the city expects that establishing an infrastructure dedicated to user compatibility tests for medical device producers and providing domestic medical device use experience to domestic medical staff and overseas trainees will greatly contribute to changing awareness of domestic medical devices, developing markets, and revitalizing industries.
Seo Byung-jo, head of Incheon Techno Park, the project organizer, said, “The medical device industry has been highly dependent on overseas imports, but I am happy to create a foothold for the domestic market to grow together with this project.”
He then stressed, “We will make efforts to create a healthy ecosystem of the domestic medical device industry by creating a fund worth KRW 1 trillion and attracting a large number of bio-health-related companies such as Incheon Bio-Tech Cluster and medical device companies.”
Cho In-kwon, head of the job economy division of the city, said, “With the selection of the public offering project, Incheon will be able to create an infrastructure to foster a new medical device industry,” adding, “As Incheon has been making great efforts to grow into a global bio city, we will spare no support for the development of the domestic medical device industry.”
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