The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently approved the establishment of a national high-performance medical apparatus and instruments innovation center in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, marking the country's first national-level innovation center in the medical device sector.

Upgraded and transformed from the Guangdong high-performance medical equipment innovation center, the new national innovation center is also the first one of its kind in Shenzhen, according to the Shenzhen Industrial and Information Technology Bureau at a news conference on Friday.

It welcomes a combination of medical enterprises and industrial associations, and operates in a market-oriented mode.

By effectively integrating innovation resources, such as leading enterprises in the medical device industrial chain, research institutes and industry associations, the innovation center is expected to serve the entire industry and important application areas, and create a global open platform for innovation, entrepreneurship, and industrial integration.

"The innovation center will adopt a dynamic mechanism in market-oriented operation, innovation collaboration, intellectual property operation and talent team. It is expected to fill the gap between academia and industry through technological innovation and engineering," said Zheng Hairong, director of the innovation center, and deputy head of the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Furthermore, the center aims to drive and empower the whole medical device industry, he said.

In August 2016, the ministry, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued a guideline on building national manufacturing innovation centers.

Currently, there were a total of 16 national manufacturing innovation centers in China, and the newly established one in Shenzhen was among them.

Data from the Shenzhen Industrial and Information Technology Bureau showed that currently, there were about 900 manufacturing enterprises and 2,000 operating enterprises in the medical equipment field in Shenzhen. Nearly 20,000 patent licenses in the field were acquired, among which more than 4,000 were invention patent licenses.

Between 2010 and 2018, the annual compound growth rate of the production value of the industry reached 12.43 percent, and a group of outstanding enterprises, such as Mindray and Lifetech, were springing up, the bureau said.

"Shenzhen has always attached great importance to the development of the healthcare industry. It is an important task for the Shenzhen Industrial and Information Technology Bureau to support the development of the city's biopharmaceutical sector and medical device sector," said Hu Xiaoqing, deputy director general of the Shenzhen Industrial and Information Technology Bureau.

The innovation center is in Shenzhen's Longhua district. Chen Jianmin, deputy head of the Longhua district, noted that the district will give full play to the location advantages of the manufacturing industry, strongly support the construction of the high-performance medical device innovation center and create a center with global influence.