The aging population drives diagnostic demand, and the penetration rate of medical imaging equipment still has a lot of room for improvement

With the development of the economy and society, the proportion of the elderly population in my country's total population continues to rise. According to the forecast of the National Health Commission, the number of middle-aged and elderly people aged 60 and above in my country will exceed 400 million around 2035, accounting for more than 30%.

The deepening of population aging will lead to a rapid increase in per capita health expenditure. According to public data from the National Health Commission, from 2012 to 2022, my country's total health expenditure accounted for 5.2% of GDP and increased to 7.0%. Among them, in 2019, my country's total health expenditure accounted for 6.7% of GDP, while the data of developed countries and regions with a deeper aging degree, such as the United States, Switzerland, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom, were 17.0%, 12.1%, 11.7%, 11.2%, 11.1%, 10.9%, 10.8% and 10.3% respectively, accounting for 1.5 to 2.5 times that of my country. It can be foreseen that as the aging degree continues to deepen, the scale of medical expenditure in my country and its proportion of GDP will continue to grow. From the perspective of payment, the continuous increase in health expenditure will bring incremental market space to the medical imaging diagnosis industry.

In addition, compared with developed countries and regions, my country's installed capacity of imaging equipment such as computed tomography (CT), MR and X-ray positron emission tomography (PET/CT) still has a large penetration space. At present, Japan and the United States have 4.5 times and 1.8 times more CT installed per million people than my country, respectively; MR installed capacity is 5.0 times and 3.6 times that of my country, respectively; PET/CT installed capacity is 7.7 times and 9.2 times that of my country, respectively. It is not difficult to see from the data that at this stage, my country's medical imaging equipment has a lower penetration rate than developed countries and regions. With the continuous implementation of the country's tiered diagnosis and treatment, the pattern of large medical institutions dominating the medical imaging diagnosis market is expected to be broken, and the configuration level and diagnosis and treatment capabilities of primary medical institutions will be significantly improved, which will help to gradually realize the improvement of the penetration rate of imaging equipment in the primary market.

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