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Bio-IT to grow at 55% in APAC region: IDC
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 18 September 2002, 19:30 IST
BANGALORE: With many countries investing heavily to position themselves as genuine players in the global bio-sciences industry, the life sciences segment in Asia Pacific has got a major boost. The Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) Bio-IT market is estimated to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55 percent to reach $3.39 billion by 2006, according to preliminary data from IDCs research and advisory service.
IDC estimates that $50 billion will be injected into the Asia Pacific life science markets from both public and private sources over the next few years. The race is clearly on among Asia Pacific countries as they seek to position themselves as genuine global bio-environments. Major focus is being centered on gene therapy, agri-sciences, bioinformatics, genomics and proteomics.
"We are now seeing life sciences top the government agendas in many of the Asian countries," said, IDC Asia Pacific Director BioIT and Life Sciences Phil Fersht.
The Korean government is aiming to join the world's top seven biotechnology powers by 2010, Taiwan is ear-marking 3 percent of GDP for life science development and Singapore wants 20,000 scientists based there by 2005. The Australian biotech industry is some years ahead of its Asian counterparts, but this gap will be diminished rapidly if the government fails to step up local investment.
China is also making a concerted effort to raise the standard and profile of its local biotechnology industry, but has several other priorities as it reforms itself economically for WTO. Hong Kong is also expected to raise its profile in the biotech sector, in addition to providing a vehicle for the internationalization of Chinas biotech products.
For IT suppliers targeting the life science area, IDCs advice is to avoid throwing technology "over the wall" and build products and services that align with bio-science needs.
"Demonstrating a true understanding of the IT requirements necessity to support and enable bio-science processes is the Holy Grail for IT suppliers in order to bridge the chasm that currently exists between IT and Science," added Mr. Fersht.