We are exploring various possibilities to expand portfolio specific for tropical disease diagnosis

Can you highlight about Omega Diagnostics’ business in India?

Andrew Shepherd

Omega Diagnostics’ foray into Indian market dates back to 1993 through its distributor and has been recognised as the supplier of high quality products to its customers. It has established brand names in its segment of infectious disease and autoimmune testing e.g. Pathozyme, Immutrep, Avitex series of products.

What are your business plans on actively foraying into the Indian healthcare market?

Omega has been one of the leading players in helping pathologists for the diagnosis of Tuberculosis, Syphilis and other infectious diseases. With acquisition of IVD arm of Allergopharma GmbH, Germany now Omega GmbH, it will offer Allergy detection products from its large bank of allergens improving diagnosis of suffering patients and their treatment. Omega would complement with their food intolerance products to aid the detection of immune reactions to foods. It also provides clinical analysis to the general public, clinics and health professionals as well as supplying the consumer Food Detective test.

What are the opportunities and challenges you foresee in the Indian healthcare industry at large for your business?

Current GDP expenditure on healthcare is just 0.9 per cent which government proposes in five-year plan to increase to 2.5 per cent, which would bring opportunities and growth in healthcare facilities including diagnostics for better treatment and prognosis. The challenge would be penetration into tier II and III cities and cost competition from an unorganised diagnostic manufacturer. High import duty adds to challenge in this highly price conscious market which has a very large potential.

Can you brief about your bundle of diagnostic product offerings?

Omega is one of the UK’s leading companies in the fastest growing area of food intolerance testing and also specialises in tests for autoimmune diseases (including anaemia, connective tissue disease and renal disease) and infectious Diseases(including Syphilis, Tuberculosis, Dengue fever), With the acquisition ofIVD arm of Allergopharma GmbH, Omega has also entered into in-vitro allergy diagnosis segment with more than 600 allergens to offer.

What is Omega Diagnostics’ USP to its Indian customers? Which strata of customers are you planning to tap?

Omega Diagnostics bring innovative, dependable, simple to use products with consistent quality, primarily in the immunoassay (from latex technology to microarray system) to Indian customers. Omega’s focus reach through is large distribution network will enable to tap all accredited pathological laboratories, hospitals and reference centre’s in tier I and II cities.

How are your innovative solutions distributed in India to ensure widespread reach and awareness?

Omega through its own subsidiary Omega Dx(Asia) Pvt Ltd shall reach customers through their own skilled and experienced field manpower supported by technical and customer services, and distribution channel poised to bring awareness in end to end solutions in the diagnosis and health management. It shall generate awareness to customers through electronic media, advertisement and printed material.

Share with us your positioning in the global market vis-a-vis your core competencies in Indian market?

The outlook for the new financial year is very encouraging with the addition of the allergy range and with other organic growth opportunities being actively pursued. There are still difficulties with some Eurozone countries but we fully expect that our anticipated growth in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries will yield major growth. Omega product’s presence in Indian market for more than two decades and setting of its subsidiary shall bring in more focus in core business with expansion in product portfolio and reach to customers.

What innovative diagnostic products can we expect from Omega Diagnostics in the near future? Any collaborations in the pipeline?

Our move in the allergy testing market now drives our R&D activity with the development of two new instrument platforms. We are exploring various possibilities to expand portfolio specific for tropical disease diagnosis through collaborative work with institutes and reputed organisations.

Please share with us the vision that you hold for Omega Diagnostics in the future?

The vision is to build a global allergy business by offering an automated instrument for a large
product range to meet the workflow needs of larger laboratories as well as to continue to grow the two key product technologies, the Generrayt microarray test and Food Detective  for food intolerance.