Director of Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Resilience Roy Himawan officially opened a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) to accelerate the downstreaming of the results of medical device research development for national health program needs in Jakarta on Wednesday, 6 March 2024.

This meeting aims as an information medium for the availability of upstream industries of national medical device raw materials that can meet standards according to medical quality requirements in Indonesia, in order to meet the diverse needs of the national medical device industry.

Invited speakers from the Ministry of Industry, Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment, BRIN, Medical Device Practitioners, PT Krakatau Steel. Tbk, PT Chandra Asri Pasific. Tbk, Indonesian Olefin, Aromatic and Plastic Industry Association (INAPLAS), also attended the Special Staff of the Minister of Health for the Resilience of the Drug and Medical Device Industry, Prof. dr. Laksono Trisnantoro, M.Sc., Ph.D, representatives from Academics, Universities and Industry Associations.

Currently, our medical device sector is still colored and dominated by imported products, especially raw materials, and research technology. The raw material industry and supporting components have not been able to develop in Indonesia and still need a lot of regulatory or policy support and market guarantees, Himawan said when opening the Focus Group Discussion.

The Ministry of Health needs to build an integrated research and development ecosystem between academia, the private sector and the government in an effort to improve access, independence and quality of medical devices. "The ecosystem is an approach taken by various countries in building their medical device industry, which is believed to be able to overcome the challenges in downstreaming medical device research," Himawan said.

Himawan further said that to accelerate the running of the ecosystem, the Ministry of Health implemented several policies to encourage the resilience of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, including facilitating technology transfer and clinical trials of medical devices, assisting Research and Clinical Trials of Domestically Produced Medical Devices, and implementing the Domestic Component Level (TKDN), which in this case also requires the Development of the Medical Device Raw Material Industry.

The Ministry of Health also sees the importance of cross-ministerial/institutional attention to the availability of raw materials for medical devices such as plastic, steel, and latex, as stated in the National Industrial Development Master Plan (RIPIN) 2015-2035.

Himawan hopes that this activity can encourage achievements in coordinating to build cross-sector support related to medical device resilience such as mapping, developing and increasing the capacity and capability of the upstream medical device industry from industrial data and the capacity of medical device raw materials.