IAS Association, Rajasthan organized a ‘Book Talk’ with Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone (AMTZ), Dr Jitendra Sharma on their Facebook page. The session focused on the idea behind creating AMTZ, revenue modelling for land allotment, financial modelling, standardisation and packaging. He was in conversation with IAS Literary Secretary, IAS Association, Rajasthan, Ms Mugdha Sinha.
Talking about the idea behind the park, Dr Sharma said that modern products particularly in healthcare have reached a level of technological complexity that must be supported by science. The aim was to take away the scientific burden from innovators and manufacturers through scientific centres. AMTZ is India’s premier medical technology park that provides scientific facilities along with common manufacturing facilities. It is one of the world’s largest medical technology manufacturing clusters.
Dr Sharma experienced scientific centres in isolation and came up with the idea of bringing all these centres under one roof. The location of the park was narrowed down to Vishakhapatnam keeping in mind factors like the requirement for a port to transport heavy medical equipment, core medical and engineering base, and the ease of doing business.
He further said that there is a necessity to generate champions instead of exploiting existing champions of a particular sector. Similarly, money can be pooled in from different schemes of different ministries instead of obtaining a lump sum amount from one ministry. Health care is a sector where if one person in the value chain loses everyone suffers. This is why it is essential to forge partnerships that are win-win for all. The range of medical devices is a heterogeneous group. One needs to break down a sector, look at the product’s critical components, create facilities to produce those components and growth will come automatically. “With regard to standardisation, all the labs in AMTZ are internationally accredited to ensure compliance with global standards. For Indian standards, committees were created under the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to adopt international standards, debate on any required changes, put it to industry voting organised by BIS who would then publish it as a national standard”, he said.
He further suggested organising a ‘Jaipur-Vizag Science & Innovation Festival’ to be hosted in both cities different times of the year. This festival will bridge innovation across the country. He said that both cities are hugely privileged and possess huge scale of skill which can be converted for the benefit of the country.