Medtronic broke ground on a new innovation center in China — the Chengdu Innovation Center at the Singapore-Sichuan Hi-Tech Innovation Park in Sinchuan Province.
"Chengdu is actively fostering innovation within the biopharmaceutical industry, and it's particularly important to build an open and pragmatic innovation environment," said Liu Liedong, vice mayor of Chengdu. "We hope that more international leading platforms, like the Medtronic Innovation Center, can inspire innovation and become a driving force in helping us explore local needs. In turn, we can facilitate stronger connections and collaborations between academia, research institutes, corporations and the biopharma industry, and enable clinical applications that help convert technology into more valuable medical services."
Here are five things to know:
1. The new innovation center is set to open in 2020 and will include cross-disciplinary clinical training and research space for medical workers across the central and western regions of China.
2. As of 2015, there were 89 on-the-job medical training organizations in China's western regions, half the number of training organizations as in the country's eastern regions. To close that gap, Medtronic hopes its new innovation center will be a "one-stop" clinical training facility.
3. The center will include training in minimally invasive surgery, intensive care, internal medicine and anesthetics. Training will also cover cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous system, gastrointestinal and renal disease, along with tumor treatment.
4. Medtronic's goal is to reach the benchmark of 7,000 healthcare professionals trained at the center within five years of operation. Medtronic has an innovation center in Shanghai that has operated for more than 10 years and plans to promote exchange between the two centers once the Chengdu location is operational.
5. Over the past several years, Medtronic has collaborated with Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone on several investment projects and hopes the innovation center will improve the local medical industry capabilities.