Penza, 17 December 2015. PenzaNews. The heart valves produced in Penza cover 60% of demand of Russian heart surgeons, announced Sergei Yevdokimov, head manager of “MedInzh” board chairman of the Penza cluster “Biomed,” during a conference at “Rameev” technopark held on Thursday, December 17.

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“That’s close to being a monopoly,” he pointed out.

Sergei Yevdokimov added that currently Penza houses nearly 20 small enterprises involved in medical prosthetics and tools development and production field, most of them busy in the cutting-edge area with a focus on implants.

“Just recently, we were buying these only abroad, but now Penza provides a decent competition to the foreign companies,” he pointed out.

As the head manager of “MedInzh” clarified, currently all producers not only try to make their goods cheap and resembling the foreign items, but also include advantages over the items made abroad.

“This is first and foremost possible through very strong first-hand cooperation with professional medics. So we think our federal cardiovascular surgery center [under the Health Ministry], the medical institute [of the Penza State University] and the [Burdenko] regional hospital are good examples of organizations that do not produce medical prosthetics or implants but fully participate in our cluster, since it is they that generate a great number of ideas, evaluations, requests. Without them, the cluster would be able to successfully develop in the Penza region,” Sergei Yevdokimov said.

He also said the fact the prices on Penza-made prosthetics and implants remained the same is the biggest 2015 achievement of “Biomed” cluster.

“Our greatest achievement is the fact that our participation resulted in prices remaining the same in the past year and the current one when the dollar-ruble exchanged rate doubled,” explained the head manager of “MedInzh.”

Moreover, Penza-made stents still cost as much as in 2014, added Sergei Yevdokimov.

Vladlen Bazylev, chief medical officer of the Penza cardiovascular surgery center, confirmed that, and added that some items even decreased in price.