Following the news that the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has launched a low-cost COVID-19 diagnostic kit under the name Corosure;

Rohit Anand, Medical Devices Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The demand for COVID-19 care medical devices has increased significantly with the number of new cases growing alarmingly day by day across geographies. Against this backdrop, several India-based medical device manufacturers have scaled up their production in anticipation of huge demand and some of them are left with unsold inventory as lack of local orders and increasing inventory has become a concern.

“Recently, the Ministry of Health has proposed allowing the export of surplus medical devices such as masks, ventilators and non-surgical aprons. This gives an opportunity to them to export the surplus devices.

“GlobalData’s research reveals that the Indian medical devices market, which accounted for more than 13% of the Asia-Pacific medical devices market in 2019, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% through 2025.

“Corosure, which is available at a base price of US$5.3 (INR399) and approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), is much cheaper compared to other options available in the market. The indigenously developed reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) based test kit is set to expand the testing criteria.

“Corosure proves that India can produce quality devices at an affordable price. This also indicates academic institutes such as IITs are capable of producing affordable and reliable devices through innovative research.

“The government should incentivize domestic manufacturers to produce low cost indigenously developed test kits. This will help manufacturers to clear unsold inventory and will inspire them to continue to produce COVID-19 care devices. However, the government may likely to  impose quantitative restrictions on exports to keep a control over the stocks.”