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Today, almost the world’s populace has access to a mobile phone and a mobile signal that is leading to tremendous development in the quality of life for everyone. As technology advances, diseases are now easier to diagnose and track, information can be distributed quicker and reach more people. Online health or digital health education is also more readily available to citizens, enabling countries to adopt more advanced health tech solutions.

For the past few years, the United States has been the global leader in health technology development, with market size of almost $120 billion. As the nation continues to reign in biotechnology, several other countries are adopting new policies in order to aggressively expand their reach in health technology space.

Now, let’s look at the top 4 countries poised to significantly heighten their health technology development.

The United Kingdom 

The UK is pouring a huge amount of dollars on research and development into the biotech industry, with the intention to grow the public-private partnerships to drive innovation. In this effort, the country has committed £150 million to develop the healthcare technology sector. Since it is backing up its financial support with policy changes to further boost development, lawmakers recently passed legislation providing significant tax credits for R&D in biotech companies. Recently this year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) launched an online resource, healthTech connect, which will support the development and adoption of health technologies in the UK.

Canada

Canada is the second-largest center of biotech companies in the world, raking in global investment dollars to fuel the development of the nation’s health tech field. The country has a strong reputation in clinical trials, health services research, and evidence-based medicine, but less so in successfully implementing new knowledge in practice. A recent nation advisory panel on healthcare innovation divulges that Canadian entrepreneurs are finding it difficult to introduce, sustain and scale up their innovations in the health care system. But the country has a forward-thinking and well-articulated plan to grow its biotech industry. The Canada Biotechnology Strategy provides a framework to synchronize public-private partnerships in R&D. Canada is also at the forefront of emerging health technologies such as stem cell research and nanotechnology. Considering reports, the nation’s health tech industry has a market size of nearly $90 billion.

China

In its effort to reshaping the health and biotech industry, China is investing the equivalent of $140 billion. Within the last two decades, the country’s healthcare system has made significant strides as it has benefited from large-scale reforms of its medical infrastructure, insurance system, in addition to the opening up of its healthcare market. In 2014, the China government pitched its healthcare sector as an area for foreign investment, introduced a new law allowing foreign investors to hold a 100 percent ownership of private hospitals. Currently, China that is the third-largest global market for pharmaceuticals expecting an annual growth rate of 30 percent, fostering huge investments in R&D and manufacturing.

India

Tech innovation in India can be transformative in delivering healthcare services, where the density of doctors is one per 1,000 people. In this regard, aggressive government initiatives have intensified India’s tremendous growth in the health technology sector. At present, the country is home to over 400 biotechnology firms, representing 300 percent growth over the past five years. The year 2017 has been a revolutionary year for the Indian healthcare market as the government released the National Health Policy after the 14 years of the previous version. New investment partners have also helped India’s health tech sector, changing the nation’s significant brain drain system. Major international companies, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Cancer Genetics Inc., have radically ramped up investment in India’s health tech companies, enabling the sector ripe for explosive growth. With recent development in the sector, the government expects the size of the technology market in India to worth $73 billion by 2020, which will rise from its current $4 billion.