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Some emerging countries have made significant progress in developing local pharmaceutical and biotechnology but had less success in building medical device industries. This paper explores the weak development of local medical device industries by analysing the contrasting evolutionary trajectories of Indian healthcare technology sectors. The Indian pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries have emerged as leading global suppliers of generic drugs and vaccines, in marked contrast to the medical devices industry. This paper reveals that weak collaborative linkage between medical device manufacturers and the Indian health system, largely absent systemic and cross-sectoral linkages, and weak communication between industry and government policy makers have become a huge barrier to the development of the Indian medical device industry in the contemporary neo-liberal environment. The weak connection between technology and industrial policy and healthcare policy objectives has severely hampered both development of national technological capabilities and the creation of affordable healthcare.

The decades since the 1950s have witnessed major growth in the bioeconomy. Emergence of the bioeconomy as a broad, creative and rapidly expanding part of the global economy coincides with the maturation of the established drug discovery system. This paper presents research evidence focused on the relationships between changes in the bioeconomy and changes in the global economy. It argues that new forms of governance and regulation are key to strengthen industrial policies needed for emerging and developing countries to take account of the complex interactions in life science innovation between technology, markets, regulation and civil society, which could significantly impact on global distribution of the industry.