In light of the country’s expected growth as a medtech market, Siemens Healthineers has made the decision to split China out from the Asia-Pacific region at the corporate level, elevating it to its own seat at the company’s table.
Siemens’ operations in China going forward will be led by their own director, Jerry Wang, who has headed up dealings there since 2018. Meanwhile, businesses in the region’s other countries, including Japan and Australia, will have a separate leader in Vy Tran, who previously served as chief compliance and quality officer for Varian Medical Systems before it was Siemens acquired it in 2021.
Those two move up the ladder following the promotion last year of Elisabeth Staudinger, the company’s former head of Asia-Pacific, to Siemens’ managing board, where she will still help oversee the two newly organized endeavors.
“It makes sense to allow diverse and fast-growing Asia Pacific markets to flourish in their own right, while establishing China, set to be the biggest global market in medical technology by 2030, as its own region,” Staudinger said in a company announcement last week.
The larger Asia-Pacific region was previously home to 27% of Siemens’ revenue for the 2021 fiscal year, totaling 4.82 billion euros, or about $4.65 billion.
China accounted for nearly half of that amount, bringing in 2.35 billion euros, for a 16% increase over the previous fiscal year, driven largely by imaging and diagnostics sales, the company said in its 2021 annual report (PDF).
Siemens lists China as one of its biggest medtech markets—with sales larger than Germany, the home of its parent multinational conglomerate—and one that is expected to grow.
As the country continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also undergoing public funding initiatives to invest in fever clinics, with a focus on installing CT scanners, as well as efforts to outfit primary care providers in some Chinese provinces, Siemens said in its report.
Wang began his tenure at Siemens Healthineers in sales and marketing in 2001, before rising to general manager of diagnostic imaging and advanced therapies in China. He then served stints at Sorin Group and Philips, before returning to Siemens in 2018.
Tran, meanwhile, joined Varian in 1998 and held leadership roles in global regulatory affairs, quality and compliance as the company has focused on cancer care.