Edwards Lifesciences aims to reach deeper into China’s structural heart-disease market amid nationwide health campaign

George Ye, senior vice president and general manager of Edwards Lifesciences Greater China, says the company is optimistic about 2023 and will continuously strive to better serve patients with innovative, top-notch products. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

With China doubling down on improving the level of health nationwide, Edwards Lifesciences — a US cardiovascular-focused MedTech company — is kicking into high gear by offering more Chinese structural heart-disease and critically ill patients greater access to its innovative therapies.

As a global leader in structural heart diseases, as well as critical care and surgical monitoring, Edwards has been operating in China for more than 20 years, with its unwavering commitment to the country, against the backdrop of huge unmet medical needs as the nation’s population ages.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there were 209.78 million Chinese people aged 65 or above as of last year, accounting for 14.9 percent of the total population.

“China is so important and strategic to us. There’s not only a large population, but a huge treatment pool for structural heart diseases that are very underdiagnosed and undertreated today,” said George Ye, senior vice president and general manager of Edwards Lifesciences Greater China.

In 2019, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, issued a guidance document on implementing the Healthy China Action Plan (2019-30), specifying objectives to optimize public health services, control major diseases, and enlarge the scale of the healthcare industry.

“Good health is not only people’s common pursuit, but also the basic foundation for the nation’s economic and social development,” Ye said. “We’re very focused on supporting the country’s ‘Healthy China’ initiative, making sure that Chinese patients have equal access to the treatment of structural heart diseases.”

Take aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve opening that usually occurs among people aged 65 or above. If not treated after 3 to 5 years, severe cases could lead to death, the rate of which is even higher than in some cancers. For many years, the primary treatment for aortic stenosis has been open-heart surgery, which could pose high risks to patients, particularly the elderly or those with other conditions like diabetes.

Among the major advances Edwards has made in caring for heart diseases is SAPIEN 3 — now the world’s most widely-used transcatheter heart valve. Such a product allows patients to have a heart valve replaced via a catheter, thereby avoiding full open-heart surgery.

Since its debut at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in 2020, the SAPIEN 3 valve has been a hit, having been successfully launched in 23 provinces, as well as cities, across China, boasting a procedure success rate as high as 98 percent.

On the surgical valve side — another business pillar for the company beyond its catheter-based system — Edwards’ RESILIA tissue valve portfolio is also well known by Chinese cardiac surgeons as the gold standard.

Dovetailing with China’s bid to build a healthier country, Edwards is ramping up efforts to provide greater access to its services at lower-tier cities and hospitals within the country. “We are not only innovating the best products with a lot of clinical evidence, but also very conscious about the economic impact of our products in the hospitals,” Ye added. “That’s also our responsibility and we take this very seriously.

Testifying to its dedication to China, Edwards collaborates closely with the leading medical institutions like the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases to offer special training to Chinese clinicians, contributing to the standard and sustainable development of valve treatment across the country. So far, more than 20,000 Chinese clinicians have received Edwards’ training through multipronged seminars and lectures, as well as academic exchange programs.

Solid foundations have been laid by the company’s strength in innovation. According to the company’s annual reports, Edwards’ spending on research and development had continuously climbed by more than 70 percent — from $443 million in 2016 to $945.2 million last year — representing more than 17 percent of sales.

Ye cited Edwards’ mission to be “patient-focused by continuously introducing innovative products”, saying the company’s investment in research and development is two times the level of typical medical device companies.

“Our focus on research and development has resulted in a very strong product pipeline for us because we haven’t been doing this only for one or two years. We’ve been doing this for many, many years,” Ye said.

In a sign of Edwards’ China strategy gaining pace, the company set up its Hong Kong office last year and has transformed its sales model in the special administrative region from a distribution model to a direct model, in order to strengthen ties with local partners, clinicians and patients.

Hailing the Asian hub’s favorable business conditions, Ye said Hong Kong’s world-class healthcare system and well-educated professionals have endowed itself with a unique role as Edwards’ “innovation gateway” to introduce more top-notch products into the Chinese mainland.

“We would like to bring all of our advanced portfolios into Hong Kong first because it’s a great place to get experience on these products and thus, in the future, move them into the Chinese mainland, either through the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area initiative or by gathering more clinical evidence in the local population and then supporting our approval process,” Ye said.

The first implant case in China involving Edwards’ MITRIS RESILIA mitral valve took place at one of the major regional acute public hospitals in Hong Kong by Dr Daniel Chan (center) in early February. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

A case in point is the first implant case in China involving Edwards’ MITRIS RESILIA mitral valve, which took place at one of the major regional acute public hospitals in Hong Kong in early February. The product debuted at CIIE last year as a tissue valve replacement specifically designed for the heart’s mitral position.

“We expect that, in the future, MITRIS RESILIA will be the main standard of care for the treatment of mitral replacement surgically in Hong Kong first. And then, we’ll introduce it to the Chinese mainland. We feel like it’ll also become the standard of care there,” Ye said.

Riding high on decades of unmatched expertise and extensive global resources, Edwards has established robust partnerships with three major public hospitals in the SAR, as well as some private institutions.

In 2021, Edwards teamed up with Shenzhen-based medical instrumentation manufacturer Mindray Medical to develop an innovative interface solution by integrating Edwards’ FloTrac series products into Mindray’s BeneVision N series medical monitors.

Optimistic about the outlook of the Greater Bay Area and China’s gradual recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Ye said he expects more upcoming partnerships to usher in enormous growth opportunities in the near term.

“What we’re focused on this year is to make sure that we have more partners so that we can reach deeper into China, even in the more remote areas that can benefit from our technology,” he said.

evanliu@chinadailyhk.com

 

This section is sponsored by Edwards Lifesciences