Market research from the International Trade Administration https://www.trade.gov/research-country, shows that over 8% of medical equipment expenditures in Portugal are made by the public sector while 20% of sales are made to the private sector. The market for medical equipment has improved in recent years and is expected to increase opportunities for exporters in the U.S.
The Portuguese market for medical equipment is mature. The medical equipment market has a high level of sophistication as the Portuguese are educated consumers and expect state-of-the-art medical treatment. The market is very receptive to U.S products with a considerable portion of market penetrated by foreign products so that imports from the U.S can be competitive. Some of the major U.S companies with offices and distribution in Portugal include GE Medical Systems, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, and Philips.
The current demand is for high quality and technically sophisticated medical equipment especially equipment that increases efficiency and reduces occupancy rates in hospitals. Today, major suppliers include the U.S, Germany, France, and Japan.
Portugal is interested in advancing their opportunities to use telehealth technologies so the National Strategic Telehealth Plan was introduced after obtaining input from 50 institutional stakeholders and experts across the health spectrum.
Telemonitoring is of particular interest across the country. The Portuguese government has launched a special program for chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and chronic heart failure. So far, telemonitoring has reduced emergency episodes by 50% and unplanned hospital admissions by 70% among the patients.
E-prescriptions are popular and are compulsory to use within the Portuguese National Health Service (NHS). Today, over 80% of patients use this service. Portugal is taking this popular service one step further by becoming the first in the EU to provide full cross border services for patient summaries and e-prescriptions.
Future plan call for the app “MySNS Carteira” to not only offer personal information to users on the website but to enable users to access data from NHS. The app plans to add teleconsultations to enable video calls so that healthcare professionals will be able to contact other healthcare professionals in other departments or practices.
These teleconsultations have been shown to work well between healthcare providers, streamlines information between services, and supports video calls, sharing of clinical images, and results from lab tests.