Ren Zhengfei said that only when people perceive their own insignificance can their behavior begin to be great.

The same is true for the IVD industry, benefiting from the social attention brought by the new crown test, it is particularly easy to fall into the booming industry and be proud of it. Calm down and carefully understand the situation of the industry from a macro perspective, so that you can recognize your own insignificance and see the direction of your efforts.

The market scale is hundreds of billions, and the number of employees is less than one million

According to the data released by the 2021 IVD Industry Development Conference, China's IVD market in 2019 exceeded RMB 115 billion (approximately US$17 billion), a year-on-year increase of more than 15%, of which imported products accounted for more than 50%. Benefiting from COVID-19 testing in 2020, the market size will increase accordingly.

The market with a scale of 100 billion yuan is not big. There are more than 200 companies in my country with revenues exceeding 100 billion. The Xiaomi Group's revenue in 2020 is 245.9 billion.

Among domestic IVD companies, there are no companies with revenues exceeding 10 billion. Although there are more than 40 listed companies, most of them have revenues of less than 2 billion. Thanks to the hype of the new crown concept, many companies are also overvalued. Revenues of more than 2 billion can have a market value of tens of billions and hundreds of billions, which will definitely cool down in the future.

There are currently about 1,700 IVD production companies in my country, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises. Calculated by 100 employees per company, less than 200,000 people. In addition to the number of distributors and terminal examiners, the total number of employees in the entire industry It will not exceed 1 million, and this number is still not as good as the total number of employees of a CNPC company (the published data is 1.38 million employees).

Low degree of internationalization

Domestic IVD has a low degree of internationalization, and only Mindray, Wanfu, Dongfang Biological and other companies have started international business earlier. Most companies are only simple foreign trade and foundry, and most of the businesses that have been built with the new crown are also these. There is still a long way to go from local internationalization to international localization. Looking back at the localization of foreign companies in my country, investment in plant construction, and research and development have been many years. In the future competition, the advantages of price and supply chain will still be different. obvious. Moreover, the products produced by foreign companies in China can no longer be called imported products, and import substitution is also afraid that it will eventually come to nothing.

The technological content and industrialization of the product is not high

The same product has been repeatedly researched and developed by various companies, and the products appearing at the exhibition are all the same, some people call it inward-rolling; the entry barrier is not high, and many leaving engineers can quickly pull up a team and quickly make a product; On the whole, the level of reagent research and development is higher than that of instrument research and development. Many reagents are equipped with imported platforms, and the research and development of domestic instrument platforms needs to be strengthened.

The degree of industrialization is not high. Because there are many types of testing items, the demand on each platform is unstable, the degree of automated production is not high, and only partial automation is possible, so when the order peak period is reached, it is necessary to recruit a large number of workers to complete it manually.

Domestic enterprises all want to do it all by themselves, take all the industrial chain, and the degree of collaboration is not high. Production companies began to research and develop raw materials, and raw material companies set foot in the testing platform. In fact, this will inevitably decentralize investment, reduce the polishing of each link, and eliminate advantages. The division of labor was originally meant for professional people to do professional things. At present, those who make raw materials, instruments, and reagents still lack the spirit of craftsmanship, so the entire industry lacks good products.

Testing is only part of the medical value

Laboratory medicine is very important, and in vitro diagnosis is called the doctor’s eye, which contributes more than 70% of clinical diagnosis information. But she is only a part of the diagnosis and treatment activities. Many results need to be interpreted in conjunction with various clinical manifestations. Moreover, after the diagnosis, it also involves a series of processes such as treatment and rehabilitation. From the perspective of the doctor and the patient, he only needs a stable result, and he is more concerned about the treatment plan.

Similarly, most of the market for domestically produced IVD is still in the second and lower level hospitals, and the proportion in the third level hospitals is still not high. Imported products still firmly control the top market, which is the market with the largest sample size and the highest premium space.

Developed industry from the media

If it weren't for the public event of the new crown, the mainstream mass media would not pay attention to such a sub-area, let alone popularize it so that all people know nucleic acid. The reality is that this field is relatively developed from the media, and there are various content-oriented public accounts such as information, technology, products, and investment. At the same time, it also brings great challenges to corporate brands, because self-media is uncontrollable and negative events are prone to occur. Brand safety is especially important.

The above is the real situation of the IVD industry that I have observed. I can perceive that there are still many areas for improvement.

Innovation is accelerating

Although it has been internalized, there is no company in the IVD field that has "lay flat", and there are still a lot of innovations taking place. Talents in the industry are highly intelligent. Many of the bosses I have met are PhDs studying abroad and have a global perspective; there are also many bosses who are doctors and have user insights; the new crown has brought molecular diagnosis to the fire, and many companies are working in multiple fields. PCR, molecular POCT products, and microfluidic products are emerging one after another; more people have product feelings and hope to make a boutique that changes the existing pattern. Only by striving to be heroes can heroes emerge in large numbers.

The market is expanding

The new crown brings two revelations, one is the vast overseas market, and the second is the rigid demand of the self-inspection market. Domestic IVD companies can work hard in these two areas. For inspections, I have always believed that prevention-oriented is greater than medical-oriented. Many sub-health conditions can be adjusted in time through detection, and finally avoid entering the medical process. This step also fits the developing wave of artificial intelligence and digitalization.

Domestic IVD is going through a golden period of development, and a bright future is slowly unfolding.