Philips to enter China's health care

The health care in China is on my agenda for a whole lot of different reasons and I consider it to be one of the more tricky industries, together with the media industry, for foreign firms to enter. So, I was pleasantly amazed by this article in the Financial Times, telling us that Dutch giant Philips is started a cooperation with a hospital in Sichuan, one of China largest.

The agreement covers eight projects and will last for seven years. Its aim is to help doctors interpret medical imagery and diagnose illnesses earlier by developing an information system and devising faster procedures. Philips hopes to sell the information system to other hospitals around the world.
The projects will focus on diagnosing illnesses such as heart disease and stroke, and finding biological indicators of mental illnesses.

Why is it hard to work in China's health care? Because even for Chinese standards it is one of the most corrupt industries where financial gain for the - indeed underpaid - doctors is more important than anything else, including the patients' wellbeing. The FT-article only mentions research, but most foreign companies enter a market in China also because of the perspective of selling their goodies in China too.
Only a few weeks ago I was in Sichuan's capital Chengdu and visited a sino-foreign research project involving quite interesting medical appliances and the foreign partners additional motive to do research there was because they believed it would help them to enter the Chinese market.
The Chinese project leader had to smile, when I told him. He had just closed down a factory for medical devices because he thought it would be impossible to make a profit in China, despite the large number of patients. He hoped the sino-foreign project would actually give him access to the international market that would be much more profitable than the Chinese one, he thought.
I'm not believing in boycotting countries, industries or Olympic Games and I think it is encouraging Philips is entering this difficult market. Trying to find solutions, even when it is tough, is the better attitude. But it won't be easy.