Market Overview

Medical disposable products refer to single-use devises (SUDs) used at hospitals, clinics, inspection centers, and for home care, and are the products related to drug infusion, transfusion lines, and surgical operations.
Many products mainly produced overseas were short in supply for FY2022 due to delay in production and transport, and some products were not fully recovered from reduced cases due to the pandemic. On the other hand, as medical institutions deployed the system of diagnostic procedures combination (DPC) and the system of supply, processing, and distribution (SPD), medical disposable inventory was appropriately managed, which led medical disposables to penetrate there. The medical disposables (general products) market size (based on distributors of domestic manufacturers and imported products and excludes diapers for adults) for FY2022 increased by 1.2% to 250,342.8 million yen, with 25 of 52 items exceeded the previous-year performances. Resume of various inspections that had been avoided amid the pandemic was also the reason for uptrend.

Noteworthy Topics

Home-Use Medical Disposables Market

As exponential increase in elderly population is expected in Japan, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) is reviewing the way terminal or end-of-life care should be and is shifting from the care for the elderly at hospitals to home care in order to secure care provisions for a long time.
Currently, home care patients that use medical disposable products are mainly those who have their “Home self-injection guidance and management fees”, “Home continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) guidance and management fees”, etc. being calculated. After FY2020 when the pandemic affected, some patients seem to have shifted to take home care, due to difficulty in hospital visits at the time.

Of the medical disposables (general products) market for FY2022, the market size for home use products was 26,280 million yen, up by 1.4% from the previous fiscal year, and was estimated at 223,775 million yen, up by 2.3% when adding the market size of elderly incontinence diapers at 197,495 million yen.
In detail, self-catheterization catheter and other urology products, and transfusion filter, indwelling needle for dialysis, respiratory/anesthetic circuits, artificial nose, or other home artificial respiratory therapy products can expect steady growth. For urinary incontinence, because the rate to treat the symptoms is still low, there is said to be many potential patients. This is why the adult diaper market continues growing.

Future Outlook

Hereafter, safety-mechanism equipped products (*1) to prevent from infection, drainage treatment system and other sucking devices, respiratory/anesthetic circuits that may become disposable, oxygen mask, nasal cannula, and kits/sets (*2) for increasing work efficiency for medical workers including medical office workers, are highly likely to continue being introduced, with the usage increased.
In addition, as the Community-based Integrated Care System has been propelled in the government policy, preparation and enhancement will be in progress in support systems such as in-home care system, infrastructure between medical facilities and households in the middle of in-home care, and subsidy systems other than medical fee system, which is projected to fuel the home-use medical disposable product market for growth.

*1) Products with safety mechanism for infection prevention: Infection control products that prevents from needlestick injury, blood scattering, misconnection (closed circuit), etc.
*2) Kits/Sets: Prepackaged single-use products containing all of the covering protection and pharmaceuticals necessary to perform general surgery, testing, treatment, etc.

Research Outline