A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare has proposed a framework for identifying medical devices that should be brought under price regulation , citing high out-of-pocket spending and wide price variations for implants and other devices. The recommendation is part of the committee’s 176th Report on “Affordability and Accessibility of Healthcare Facilities in Public and Private Sector,” presented to the Rajya Sabha and tabled in the Lok Sabha on August 7. The committee has proposed a 100-point Medical Device Price Regulation Score (MDPRS) to assess currently unregulated medical devices.

The scoring system would consider disease burden, annual procedure volume, out-of-pocket expenditure, market size, import dependence, price variation and trade margins, availability of alternatives, and health technology or clinical evidence. Devices scoring 80 or above would fall…