An eleventh group includes blanket warmers, autoclaves, suction pumps, sequential compressor devices (SCDs), stretchers, stress test systems, heaters/coolers, dry imagers, and beds.

Medical imaging equipment dominates the global refurbished market in 2016, as “most health care facilities in developing countries cannot afford new equipment due to their high installation and maintenance costs,” the report found.


Marketsandmarkets predicted the biggest growth area in the next five years would be in the cardiovascular and cardiology equipment sector due to the widespread challenges of dealing with heart-related and other cardiac ailments worldwide.

At present, the report found that North America is number one in the global refurbished medical equipment market, with Europe number two. But the Asia-Pacific region is looking to have the largest CAGR from 2016 to 2021.

India is expected to have the highest growth rate in that region during those years.

In 2015, Marketsandmarkets Assistant Manager – Healthcare Preeti Kumari wrote about the market forces there. “The Indian refurbished medical equipment market is expected to grow at a lucrative CAGR of 14.5 percent from 2014 to 2020. Growing demand for low-cost medical devices due to financial constraints, increasing privatization in the health care sector, and rising adoption of refurbished medical devices in Northern states of the country are the key factors fueling the growth of the Indian refurbished medical equipment market. In addition, factors such as aging population and growing incidence/prevalence of lifestyle diseases are further propelling the market growth.”

India's market potential is nothing new. A Marketsandmarkets report from four years ago called it the most promising new market. That report projected the refurbished medical devices market could reach $8.45 billion by 2017.

Although developing countries were cited in that report as a major driver of that growth, it also referred to the reluctance of public sector facilities to buy refurbished devices in countries like Venezuela and the Philippines, saying regulations that ban or restrict imports in many countries are acting as "restraints" on market growth.

The biggest players in the refurbished market, according to the new analysis are: GE Healthcare (U.S.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), Siemens AG (Germany), Block Imaging International Inc., (U.S.), Soma Technology Inc. (U.S.), DRE Medical Inc. (U.S.), Agito Medical A/S (Denmark), Everx Pvt Ltd. (Australia), Integrity Medical Systems Inc. (U.S.), and Radiology Oncology Systems Inc. (U.S.)

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