Mexico, Brazil and Argentina currently account for 67% of mobiles apps focused on providing health care options. And to improve the application of information technologies in health, access could be given to 15.5 million additional patients per year in Mexico.

The saturation of the public health system in Mexico has forced the private sector to innovate the techniques of care for patients who have a high possibility of being incapacitated.

The company Group Sohin launched the Concierge app, currently used by more than 4,000 patients, which functions as a digital complement that provides personalized attention to patients with complex chronic-degenerative diseases.

With this application, the company assigns a person who supports the patient to complete the administrative procedures and accompanies him in their treatments, in addition allows him to share his mood to receive emotional support in his recovery.

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The theft in medicines has led to the loss of approximately USD2.7 million and, also contributes to the rise of illegal trade of these products in the open market (street vendors and internet). About 4% of the medicines sold in Mexico are irregular (1.5% are for sale on the Internet and 2.5% in markets on wheels or illegal establishments), all of which represents approximately USD440 million a year.

The Unefarm, the authorities of the Federal Commission for the Protection of Health Risks (Cofepris) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) work in coordination to report the theft of lots of merchandise and detection of irregular market or web pages without the corresponding certificate. The Unefarm stated that from 2013 to date the federal authorities have suspended about 17,000 illegal advertising advertisements linked to health, of which 67% are on the internet.

The organization mentioned the existence of an international agreement between health agencies of Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay and Central America, in coordination with Spain, to combat this type of sites and, other agreements with portals such as Free Market and Second Hand for monitoring, in collaboration with the Cyber ​​Police.

In the last year alone there were at least 50 robberies and assaults to pharmacies in the eastern area of ​​the state of Mexico and Mexico City, reason why the entrepreneurs have had to resort to the purchase of Insurance policies, alarms and closed circuits of surveillance, but has been insufficient.

Aristeguinoticias

To fill this gap, Global Health Intelligence (GHI) decided to delve into its database (which covers 86% of all hospitals in Latin America and now includes Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay) to analyze which hospitals have the highest equipment counts in 4 specific categories:

• Patient care (number of beds)
• Diagnostic imaging equipment
• Cardiovascular equipment
• Maternity unit equipment

These four categories are critical pillars when evaluating patient care. The number of beds within an institution is often an indicator of the size of the hospital and may be correlated to the level of care. Diagnostic imaging equipment is essential to properly diagnose any number of life-threatening and chronic conditions. Cardiovascular equipment is just as important given the prevalence of heart disease in Latin America. A majority of births take place in hospitals and birthing is one of the main activities of most hospitals, which denotes significant importance to maternity units and infant care. While additional categories could have been included, GHI decided to focus on these 4 areas of care in order make the ranking more manageable.

Why Multiple Categories and Countries?

Rankings are often all-encompassing with no specific focus, such as the “The 50 best hospitals.” Given the complexities of healthcare systems in place and the context in which they operate, GHI opted to acknowledge these characteristics by creating a ranking per leading category. This also enables smaller yet more specialized hospitals to form part of the ranking.

GHI applied the same plurality by setting up the rankings per country in order to reflect local market dynamics accurately. For example, Brazil has over 200 million people and over 7,000 hospitals. It would be an unjust comparison to include Brazilian hospitals alongside those of Peru, for instance, a market that’s 10 times smaller.

Rankings for the Best Equipped Hospitals

The best-equipped hospitals in Argentina
The best-equipped hospitals in Brazil
The best-equipped hospitals in Chile
The best-equipped hospitals in Colombia
The best-equipped hospitals in Dominican Republic
The best-equipped hospitals in Mexico
The best-equipped hospitals in Peru
The best-equipped hospitals in Puerto Rico

Dive Deeper

This GHI ranking will give you an initial sense of which Latin American hospitals are best-equipped. But that’s just a surface view. It takes a deeper dive into the data to understand which market segments have the best potential to drive your revenues.

You can get this deep dive by subscribing to our database , which quickly lets you use data visualization tools to see which hospitals have the biggest needs and what those needs are. Parsing that is what will uncover opportunities for your sales team and allow you to grow your revenues in different markets. Check out this video to understand how the database can help drive new and existing revenue streams. Then contact GHI directly for an even deeper sense of how our database can be the perfect tool for your sales team.

Obesity leads to numerous chronic degenerative disorders whose treatments are expensive and exhausting leading to rise in healthcare expenses.

The Ministry of Health (MoH) plans to increase awareness amongst its people about healthy lifestyles and prevention of obesity. The MoH will be implementing public policies to keep its citizens healthy and fit. The ministry plans to organize free exercise sessions in parks and public squares to improve public awareness about physical activity.

More than 2000 bariatric surgeries have been performed to improve the quality of life. At CDMX, “Health Kiosks” have been set up for basic health checkups. In addition to the 220 health centers and 12 clinics, the Supply Center offers care for those who willing to change their lifestyle.

Leading the trend were products related to artificial respiration; massage equipment; instruments and equipment using UV, visible or IR optical radiations; as well as CT Scanners, X-ray machines, radiography/radiotherapy equipment. In number of units, all these categories demonstrated a CAGR of over 20% from 2014 to 2016f.

Download the complete report for more information.

The NIH forms a very prominent part of health system and provide services with high quality services for free. Mexico occupies the 29^th position in scientific production globally and second in Latin America. UNAM is the most important academic center of the country with 4,598 researchers in the National System of Researchers (SNI), followed by the CONACYT research centers with 1,661.

The NIH and the Hospitals of High Specialty have 1,188 SNI researchers. The formation of the “National Consortium for Research and Innovation in Translational Medicine” will allow a greater involvement of UNAM, CONACYT and the health sector to move from basic research to clinical applications and technological developments.

Inter-institutional cooperation becomes the backbone of this consortium. Transnational medicine was defined as medicine/technology where one can transfer from one place to another. The NIH will be conducting most of the clinical research and teaching supported by UNAM and CONACYT.

The consortium will also be supported by trusts, foundations and companies. Within this framework, awards were given to 10 distinguished researchers from the health system.

The report requested the government to consider the policies for allowing better distribution of professionals in locations deprived of specialists. Two migratory waves were observed in Uruguay; one during the dictatorship and the other during the economic crisis in 2002. However, the situation seems to have reversed with very few doctors migrating to other countries in search of better working conditions.

According to the Medical Union there is zero unemployment in the sector, yet 7% and 10% of Uruguayan doctors work abroad. The majority travel to Spain (51.7%) followed by Chile (24.4%). With the reversal of situation, doctors from other nations are moving to Uruguay for work, especially from Venezuela, Cuba and Pakistan.

The manufacturing units located in Tijuana manufacture millions of medical devices from intravenous bags to artificial respirators for the global market. Around 70% of the medical device manufacturing companies in Tijuana are American-owned including Medtronic, Carefusion, DJO Global, etc.

New taxes on imports are likely to increase the cost of medical devices in the US with companies keeping their major operations outside the country. The US imports of medical devices have more than tripled from 2001 to 2016 reaching USD43.9 billion, according to BMI Research.

Mexico purchases most of its raw material and capital machinery from United States. If America imposes the border tax, Mexico could impose a tariff on raw materials supplied from the US. This will lead to increasing production cost making companies to shift to lower cost suppliers affecting the American suppliers.

2016 recorded the highest number of confiscations with 6.8 million medical devices. Condoms were the main units seized in the informal market. Other medical devices confiscated included surgical materials, healing materials, medical equipment and diagnostic agents such as needles, catheters, syringes, probes, cannulae and scalpel.

The seized products were those which did not comply with good manufacturing practices, conditions of registration, labeling, or unstable. The Commission also reported that highest number of confiscations were from Jalisco, Mexico City, State of Mexico, Oaxaca and Nuevo León.

Among the products seized by COFEPRIS the highlighted ones this year were the ~47,000 HIV test kits made in China that can give false negative results. The Commission said that these rapid test kits have no health records and could endanger the health of patients who have not received the required medical treatment. The regulatory agency seized a government warehouse in the state of Veracruz which was accused of supplying counterfeit medicines to state hospitals.

COFPRIS announced new rules of classification of medical devices will be published in April this year in the Official Gazette of the Federation. The agency plans to deregulate 701 products that do not require sanitary registration or are low risk. The new rules of classification of medical devices will be decided under three agencies namely the COFEPRIS, the Mexican Association of Innovative Industries of Medical Devices and the National Chamber of the Cosmetic Products Industry. Since 2015, 2,242 medical devices have been deregulated as they no longer pose a health risk.