China has become the second largest market for medical devices in the world, said an official at the country's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) on Wednesday.

China's medical device industry has developed rapidly, with an average compound annual growth rate of 10.54 percent over the past five years, Xu Jinghe, NMPA's deputy director, said at a press conference.

Xu said that the administration has focused on medical device innovation in recent years and issued several approval procedures, allowing medical devices that meet certain criteria for priority evaluation and approval procedures.

Currently, a total of 217 innovative high-end medical devices have been approved, some of which used to be highly dependent on imports.

Most of these devices, like the brain pacemaker, carbon-ion therapy system, proton therapy system and artificial blood vessel, have been used in clinical diagnosis and treatment and achieved good results, said Xu.

According to Jiao Hong, head of NMPA, the number of drugs approved for marketing through priority approval procedures was over 100 each year. The priority review scheme offers faster registration for new drugs that have clinical advantages, such as children's medicines and rare disease drugs.

A total of 66 medicines for children were approved in 2022, and 46 completed technical review in the first half of this year, said Jiao.

China will continue to optimize the approval of drugs with urgent clinical shortages, such as those for rare diseases and children, and "stuck neck" products, and promote a batch of innovative medical devices with high technology, curative effect and influence, Jiao added.