dc.description.abstract | With years of development progress, the medical device industry in Taiwan has occupied an important position in the biotechnology industry. Health care demand grows due to upcoming aging society, increasing numbers of chronic patients and emerging needs of quality health care. Therefore, there are considerable rooms for market growth in medical device industry. However, Taiwan medical equipment manufacturers mainly produce physiological testing equipment and diagnostic equipment. They have difficulties to compete with advanced countries on quality and design on high-end medical equipment such as physiological monitoring devices and imaging medical devices. Whereas China and developing countries still have tremendous winning advantage on manufacturing costs.
How can domestic enterprises improve their competitiveness in the face of a back-to-back rivalry? Taiwan′s medical and diagnostic equipment manufacturers need to have critical thinking and formulate strategies accordingly.
In regards for aging population, declining birth rates and increasing population of chronic diseases patients, global demands on medical device is increasing rapidly. Unlike consumer product, governments of all countries have different types of standard and regulations on medical equipment, including all the production, specifications, uses, instructions, labeling, advertising, sales, etc. There are differences on regulation and standards between Europe, the United States and Taiwan. Therefore, industry development is not the same. This dissertation studies diagnosis and monitoring segment of medical equipment industry uses Structure-Conduct-Performance as the analysis framework on domestic economic conditions, market competitiveness, supply competitiveness and financial performance of these manufacturers. Furthermore, there will be an overall introduction and analysis of global medical device industry supported by other research papers. Finally, a series of suggestion will be provided for government and suppliers on how to find a niche market and create a strong foothold to improve its current position among medical devices’ global supply chain.
The conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. Creating user value: product design and development must be based on user needs and habits as the starting point. 2. Innovation: Enterprises need to create higher profit by innovation through finding its core technology that can satisfy users needs. 3. Strategic cooperation and resources coordination on development. Due to the high technical threshold, the development is time and resources consuming. It is even more crucial to rely on the strategic cooperation and resources coordination between manufacturers government, academia, researchers and doctors to work together overcome the development difficulties. 4. International customer relationship management: It is important to obtain orders among competitors through pricing advantage and stable quality. It is even more important to create stable business and form strategic alliance with customers. 5. Application of Technology: The application of medical equipment in diagnosis and monitoring needs to be designed and developed towards miniature, portable, wireless, customized, and humane needs. | en_US |