Jiading District in Shanghai is accelerating the development of its high-end medical equipment industrial park. In the "United Imaging Town" in northern Jiading, the second phase of United Imaging Healthcare's high-end medical equipment production and R&D base, with a total investment exceeding 3.1 billion yuan, is progressing at full speed. Upon completion, this building complex, comparable in scale to a super-large integrated facility, will focus on the research, development, and industrialization of high-end medical equipment and core components such as PET-CT and MRI systems, aiming to overcome critical "bottleneck" technological challenges. The growth of "United Imaging Town" represents not merely an expansion in physical space but also reflects Jiading's upgrade path for its biomedical industry toward higher-end, clustering, and internationalization. Shanghai's "15th Five-Year Plan" explicitly states that "biomedicine will be prioritized in Pudong, Minhang, and Jiading, accelerating the construction of a world-class biomedical industry cluster." Jiading's own "15th Five-Year Plan" proposes to leverage its positioning as "Medical Devices in Jiading," continuously build the "Shanghai Med-Valley" industrial brand, strengthen the municipal-level high-end medical device industrial agglomeration zone, and strive to create a pioneering demonstration zone for biomedical innovation.
Xiao Wengao, Secretary of the Jiading District Committee, stated that biomedicine is one of the three leading industries Jiading is focusing on developing. The district will persistently enhance the leadership of scientific and technological innovation, solidify the system for originating technological innovation, and intensify efforts in strengthening, supplementing, extending, and expanding industrial chains to form an industrial ecosystem characterized by "deep roots, a strong trunk, and lush branches and leaves."
Aspiring to the high-end segment, the exhibition hall at United Imaging's Shanghai Jiading headquarters resembles a museum of domestically produced high-end medical equipment. Under spotlight, a series of world-class medical devices, including the world's first 2-meter PET-CT and the world's first 5.0T whole-body MRI, are displayed. While the machines are silent, they stand as the best response to the ambition set when United Imaging was founded 15 years ago: "to create high-end medical equipment for Chinese people." For a long time, China's medical imaging market was dominated by three manufacturers: Siemens, Philips, and GE. The landscape began to change only with the rise of domestic brands represented by United Imaging. According to data from global marketing firm IPSOS, United Imaging products have now been installed in over 2,700 tertiary hospitals nationwide. Furthermore, the company is accelerating its "Made in China, Shared Globally" strategy, with its products covering more than 90 countries and regions.
The deep cultivation of leading enterprises in Jiading has laid the foundation for "Medical Devices in Jiading." Zhang Jingping, Director of the Jiading District Science and Technology Commission, introduced that the district has gathered more than 150 local enterprises engaged in medical device production and R&D, with the comparable growth rate of output value ranking first in the city for 2025. "Jiading is firmly seizing the strategic opportunity presented by the national push for self-reliance and controllability in high-end medical equipment, riding the momentum to advance," Zhang said. Specifically, Jiading will adhere to the coordinated development of "large installations" and "small devices," strive to make breakthroughs in key equipment like high-end imaging devices and image-guided radiotherapy systems, tackle core complete systems such as 3.0T high-field MRI and photon-counting CT, thereby driving an upgrade in the industry's capability level.
The "United Imaging Town," planned over an area of 9.5 square kilometers, will play a core driving role. A relevant official from Jiading Industrial Park mentioned that with the second phase of United Imaging's high-end equipment production and R&D base becoming operational this year, the town's industrial cluster area is rapidly attracting resources from both upstream and downstream segments of the industrial chain. Other high-end medical device enterprises rooted in the town are also enhancing the influence of "Medical Devices in Jiading." For instance, APAC, a pioneer in domestic particle therapy, has overcome a series of technical challenges like liquid-helium-free superconducting magnets and compact rotating gantries, laying a solid foundation for the development of next-generation modular, multi-particle, compact therapy systems. Jiading's goal in building the high-end medical device industrial agglomeration zone is to achieve, by 2027, over 100 new first-time approvals for Class III domestic medical device registrations and over 30 medical device product approvals in overseas markets. From an enterprise perspective, the aim is to cultivate a "dual梯队" of leading enterprises and unicorn companies.
Shifting focus southward, approximately 1 kilometer from the Ruijin Hospital Jiading Campus, the Shanghai Med-Valley Industrial Park is also bustling with activity. Zhang Zhongping, co-founder of resident company Xiro Medical, noted that at lunchtime in the cafeteria, one often sees people in "white coats" and "business suits" chatting over meals and exchanging WeChat contacts. This highlights the difference between Med-Valley and standard industrial parks; alongside corporate personnel, a significant number of doctors, researchers, engineers, and university faculty and students work here daily. The diversity in the park's population composition reflects Jiading's new approach to restructuring innovation logic and developing the high-end medical device industry.
The industry widely acknowledges that medical device innovation involves long cycles, high investment, and significant risk. The disconnection between medicine and engineering has constrained high-quality industrial development. In the view of Chang Qing, Director of the Ruijin Innovation Center, deep integration between medicine and engineering is key to driving medical technology innovation. Leveraging the resource advantages of Ruijin Hospital's National Medical Center, the Med-Valley Industrial Park has pioneered an industry-medicine integration model described as "doctors as chain leaders, enterprises as chain cores, government as chain directors, and the park as partners."
Xie Sijia, a bioelectronic chip design engineer, works at the Ruijin Hospital Medical Chip Research Institute located in Building 3 of the Med-Valley park. She spends a considerable amount of time interacting with doctors from various departments. "Last time I spoke with a cardiologist, they mentioned that compared to heart failure detection, there is a more urgent need for myocardial infarction detection," Xie said. "Such daily communications allow me to face the 'real needs' from the clinic directly, enabling timely adjustments to the chip's detection application direction and advancing chip material development."
The breaking down of barriers between clinical practice and research has directly led to substantial outcomes. A representative from SURE, an park-based company focusing on surgical robots, explained that when surgeons observed inflexibility with straight blades during procedures, engineers modified the robot's blades from straight to curved. With immediate feedback on clinical pain points, technological iteration accelerates continuously. In August 2025, SURE's single-port surgical robot obtained EU CE certification, becoming the first Chinese surgical robot to receive this certification.
Ge Xiaojing, General Manager of the Med-Valley Industrial Park, introduced that the Ruijin Innovation Center currently hosts 11 high-level research institutes and laboratory platforms, along with 3 corporate joint laboratories. The park has gathered multiple enterprises and projects directly involving or initiated by clinical experts. "The intersection of medicine and engineering, and the integration of industry and medicine, are the core distinctions and advantages of Jiading's approach to developing the biomedical industry compared to other areas in the city," Zhang Jingping stated. To deepen and solidify the Med-Valley model and further promote the "Medical Devices in Jiading" brand, Jiading will strengthen the collaborative transformation under the "Ruijin-Jiading紧密型医联体 + industrial chain" framework, establish regular hospital-enterprise对接 mechanisms, and provide one-stop services for innovative devices covering "hospital validation - clinical feedback - iterative optimization."
During interviews, the concept of a "tropical rainforest" style industrial ecosystem was repeatedly mentioned. A rainforest features towering trees, shrubs, vines, abundant sunlight and rain, diverse species, and perpetual vitality. Looking across Jiading District, while the "United Imaging Town" and the Med-Valley Industrial Park serve as the "twin engines," other sectors are also racing ahead in their respective fields. For example, in Jiangqiao, Yingtai Medical, a champion in a specific manufacturing segment, is continuously empowering 16 resident enterprises of the Hongqiao International Innovative Medical Device Industrial Park through its shared sterilization center and animal testing platform. In Nanxiang, collaboration with Fudan University is being comprehensively deepened in the field of precision medicine. Leveraging a deep service system for the early discovery, concept validation, and technology transfer of precision medicine achievements, Nanxiang is fully committed to facilitating the industrialization of rapidly developing companies within its bounds.
"Our team essentially 'soaks together' with Fudan professors, allowing us to capture many ideas even while they are still 'below the surface,' while also synthesizing the latest scientific research achievements from the Fudan affiliated hospital system to form a project map," said Wang Rui, Executive Deputy General Manager of Nanxiang Life Origin Valley. It is precisely through this approach, he noted, that Nanxiang's total biomedical output in 2025 grew by 40% compared to the previous year.
With differentiated development and multiple points of success, supported by enterprises and carried by industrial parks, Jiading is accelerating the construction of an industrial landscape that coordinates development across multiple tracks including high-end medical devices, precision medicine, and modern traditional Chinese medicine.
To empower this tropical rainforest-style industrial system ecosystem, Jiading has a series of measures. These include: perfecting a set of promotion mechanisms with efficient cross-departmental task force decision-making; strengthening one industrial brand, continuously building the core IP of "Shanghai Med-Valley"; launching a policy navigation system integrating policy packages from the national, municipal, and district levels; and forming a fund matrix to construct a multi-level investment system, among others.
Anchored to the goal of becoming a pioneering demonstration zone for biomedical innovation, Jiading will further activate innovation momentum, accelerate the transformation and commercialization of achievements, and advance towards ambitious horizons.
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