On February 21, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan" National Plan for the Development of the Aging Industry and the Pension Service System (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). According to the "Report on the Development of China's Aging Industry", from 2014 to 2050, the consumption scale of the elderly population in the mainland will grow from 4 trillion yuan to about 106 trillion yuan, and the market presents a blue ocean, covering traditional fields such as medicine, real estate, and finance, as well as emerging technology fields such as robots, wearable devices, and brain-computer interfaces.
It involves artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces
The "Planning" emphasizes that by 2025, the total number of old-age service beds will exceed 9 million, the proportion of nursing beds in old-age institutions will reach more than 55%, the compliance rate of supporting old-age service facilities in newly built urban areas and newly built residential areas will reach 100%; the proportion of second-level and above comprehensive hospitals with geriatric departments will reach more than 60%, and the enrollment scale of undergraduate colleges and universities and vocational colleges related to old-age services will increase significantly.
Chen Yonglan, managing director of oriza Group and president of Asia-Pacific China, a French private equity investment fund, told the first financial reporter: "This latest plan has quantitative requirements for a number of indicators, including pension beds, and is more clear than the planning goals of ten years ago. This shows that through years of practical experience, the country has formed a clearer strategic deployment in terms of macro policies. ”
In the old-age service system, the "Planning" emphasizes the vigorous development of the silver economy, including the development and expansion of the elderly products industry, for different life scenarios, focusing on the development of aging home appliances, furniture, bathing devices, as well as intelligent wheelchairs, biomechanical crutches and other auxiliary products, the development of elderly educational toys, musical instruments and other leisure escort products, the development of auxiliary handling, turning over, inspection and other robots and elderly guardianship, anti-loss positioning products.
In terms of promoting the scientific and technological upgrading of elderly products and intelligent upgrading, the "Planning" proposes to strengthen the scientific and technological support of elderly products, accelerate the in-depth application of information technology and intelligent hardware such as the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, 5G and other information technologies in the field of elderly products, support the research and development of key technologies such as intelligent interaction, intelligent operation, and multi-machine collaboration, improve the intelligent level of rehabilitation aids, health detection products, home service robots and other products suitable for the elderly, and carry out multi-scenario pilot use.
The "Plan" also requires strengthening the transformation of the achievements of science and technology for the elderly, using existing funding channels to support the key technology and product research and development, service innovation and application promotion of elderly products, and promoting industrial development; accelerating the integrated application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, brain science, virtual reality, and wearable in health promotion and rehab rehabilitation aids, developing exoskeleton rehabilitation training, cognitive impairment assessment and training; developing medication and nursing reminders, respiratory aids, sleep disorder interventions, and other health detection and testing equipment.
Combined with the special implementation of the "14th Five-Year Plan" national key research and development plan, the "Plan" emphasizes the research and development and manufacturing of elderly products and the application of major scientific and technological research, focusing on the rehabilitation treatment needs of nervous system injury and brain cognitive dysfunction after injury, breaking through brain-computer interaction and other technologies, developing wearable holter ECG detection equipment and other physiological parameter detection equipment, and developing new signal acquisition chips and intelligent digital medical terminals.
In terms of the orderly development of inclusive financial services for the elderly, the "Plan" proposes to support commercial insurance institutions to develop commercial endowment insurance and health insurance suitable for the elderly, and guide commercial insurance institutions to accelerate research and development of products suitable for diversified nursing needs such as home care, community nursing, and institutional nursing; support the development of housing reverse mortgage pension insurance business for the elderly; and strengthen the risk management of the aging financial market.
Industrial structural contradictions are prominent
The first financial reporter found through the global patent data search of wisdom bud that in the field of "intelligent aging" technology on intelligent wheelchairs, rehabilitation robots and other intelligent pension equipment, as well as voice control, limb control and other related information barrier-free, China has a total of more than 88,000 patent applications, and the number of patent applications has shown a continuous upward trend in recent years.
In addition, from the perspective of patent applicants, the leading number of technology manufacturing companies in this field include Gree Electric Appliances, OPPO, Baidu, Huawei, Tencent, Lenovo, ZTE, Alibaba, etc. Further observing the technical themes involved in the above patents, the technologies with more layouts in the field of "age-friendly intelligence" in China include voice control, robots, cameras, voiceprint recognition, etc.
According to a National Assessment Report on Ageing and Health in China released by WHO, the aging process of Chinese population is significantly faster than that of other low- and middle-income countries. By 2040, the proportion of the population aged 60 and over is expected to rise from 12.4 per cent in 2010 to 28 per cent. However, the contradictions in the structure of China's pension industry are prominent.
Chen Yonglan told the first financial reporter: "China has a huge elderly population structure, and the fundamental demand for the pension industry is huge, but there is a fundamental structural imbalance in China's pension industry. The layout of the modern old-age service industry and the systematic old-age care institutions are lacking, and the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent. ”
He said that in order to solve the structural problems of the elderly, it is necessary to ensure the improvement and realization of effective strategies and policies, including three aspects: pension facilities, supporting industries and institutionalized service groups.
"The construction of pension facilities should strike a balance between non-profit and commercial market-oriented, which requires the construction of a framework from the aspects of macro policies, market input and government supervision, which China has lacked in the past and accumulated in this regard." Chen Yonglan told the first financial reporter.
He also said that compared with the rapid outbreak of the maternal and infant market in recent years, China's industrial chain including pension products, rehabilitation supplies, drugs and other fields is still relatively weak, and the geriatric departments and related medical services in major hospitals are not perfect. "The needs of the elderly have not been systematically and market-oriented, and there is a lack of special R&D and investment institutions to participate, and it is necessary to increase the guidance of macro policies in the future." Chen Yonglan told the first financial reporter.
Specialized demand attracts foreign investment
It is worth noting that the silver economy not only brings new opportunities to a large number of traditional industries and emerging startups in China, but also attracts the attention and participation of international investors.
Taking the French old-age service institutions as an example, its advantages are mainly reflected in the treatment of chronic diseases, pensions and medical cross-border cooperation, etc., in addition, the research and development of "non-drug therapies" in France is also very developed.
Marc Saillon, chairman of Almage, a professional Alzheimer's disease care institution in France and founder of Emmezhi Health Consulting (Shanghai), told the first financial reporter: "It is very necessary for the state to promote the development of the pension industry through top-level policy planning and financing from public institutions, and in Europe, public financing also plays an important role in the operating budget of institutions. ”
Two years ago, Emerson partnered with China Resources Land to provide a solution for dementia rehabilitation care for elderly patients in China. As early as 2018, the leaders of China and France jointly signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of silver economy to promote cooperation between the two countries in the field of pensions. China has also introduced a number of well-known French pension institutions, including ORPEA and COLISEE. Goriszer is also one of the most successful projects of the Orizel Fund in China, bringing several times the return on capital to the latter.
In Sayon's view, China's pension industry has a significant gap compared with developed countries, which also means huge market opportunities. "China's pension market has its own characteristics, and home care has played a very important role. In Europe, a complete ecosystem has been established around the living places of the elderly. Sai Yong told the first financial reporter, "China will also develop in the direction of improving this ecological chain in the future, develop a series of professional equipment and consumables, and is expected to take the form of centralized procurement, cultivate a number of professional service equipment suppliers, so as to establish a set of nursing system outside the hospital, to meet the elderly, disabled and chronic diseases of the elderly life care and medical care superimposed service needs." ”
In response to the special care of Alzheimer's patients, Sai Yong told the first financial reporter: "The care of the elderly with dementia has high professional requirements, not only to take care of their bodies, but also to take care of their mental health; and for each patient's condition, it is necessary to provide different care programs, and most institutions do not have such capabilities." ”
In Europe, smart monitoring devices are already being used in specialized nursing facilities like Emmeminal, such as remote alarms equipped with multimodal sensing devices, digital sensory stimulation tools, and intelligent robots capable of analyzing the activity levels of the elderly.
"These emerging technologies allow us to measure the evolution of the loss of autonomy in older adults and intervene in advance and find ways to potentially delay this process." Sai Yong told the first financial reporter. But he stressed that the core of professional nursing is still professional nursing staff. "All of these technologies are designed to help caregivers do their jobs better." he said.
Chen Yonglan told the first financial reporter: "From the perspective of foreign investment, they are more adept at the combination of professional and high-end pension and medical industries, and China should fully learn from the experience of developed markets and introduce and land advanced technologies and talent training mechanisms through preferential policies." ”
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