The trade balance of medtech products of Spain depicts a high dependency on imports, with growing numbers in 2020 and especially in 2021 related to the pandemic context. Switzerland has always been a net medtech exporter to Spain with a tremendous increase in 2021 for the 300220 and 300215 HS headings (vaccines and prevention masks), exports that will depend on the COVID situation. Leaving that aside, the biggest Swiss medtech exports to Spain are orthopaedic appliances and electrodiagnosis apparatus.
Improvement of the healthcare systems - opprtunities for Swiss SMEs
Spain is among the top two beneficiaries of the NGEU budget, where the improvement of the healthcare system is one of the key pillars, with an allocation of, so far, € 1,069M. Within that pillar, medtech initiatives such as the C18.I1 section can have a remarkable position. As Spain lacks the manufacturing power to fulfill that demand, this represents a valuable opportunity for highly developed medtech companies like the Swiss ones.
Key decision makers in autonomous communities
The concept of medtech encompasses various categories, whose common characteristic is that medtech’s solutions are used to save and improve people’s lives, from prevention to diagnosis to cure. Those categories are: medical devices (MDs), in vitro diagnostics medical devices (IVDs) and digital health tools and services. Spain follows a tax revenues-based health model where autonomous communities are the key decision makers. Health expenditure in 2020 represented 10.3% of the GDP, which is in line with the EU average. In general, health indicators in Spain are considered a reference in global terms, although there is still room for improvement.
